Post-Verbal Communications

Post-Verbal Communications

Courtesy of Sothothery Researcher Mirra Zanzibar.

“The real world is unspeakable.” -Alfred Korzybski (early 20^th century Polish/Russian Philosopher/Scholar)

A colleague of mine and I were discussing the limitations of language (among many things, like the best pancakes in Londinium). But we kept going in circles on just how difficult it could be to explain something using the spoken word… especially in trying to explain complex concepts like a deep experience, an abstract or philosophical concept, or a new idea, and most especially subjective phenomena.

We were discussing was just how clumsy verbal or written communication is in spreading what exists in one head into another (we’ve all been there, trying our hardest to do that with a friend, loved one, colleague, student, or stranger) — that, instead of ‘transmutation’ of a concept or idea, like how a cold might spread, communicating an idea or viewpoint through language is actually quite difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible.

The conversation took an even more interesting turn when we zeroed in on just what a world would look like if information, wisdom, and concepts could be fully and instantly articulated from one person to another.

Brain-computer interfaces that help take advantage of artificial intelligence’s promise in connecting it directly to the brain and to secondarily overcome the limitations of what is called ‘the low-bandwidth’ method of current human communication. I am dubious, the internet was also supposed to makes people smarter because of increased access to information. I also don’t think increasing pithecine dependence on artificial intelligence that intimately will end well.

The objective of the seamless brain-computer interface is to help move the human population beyond the extremely limiting medium of verbal or written communication, and instead get into what we’ll call “conceptual communication.

A word is simply an approximation of a thought-buckets that a whole category of similar-but-distinct thoughts can all be shoved into. If I watch a horror movie and want to describe it to you in words, I’m stuck with a few simple low-res buckets—“scary” or “creepy” or “chilling” or “intense.” My actual impression of that movie is very specific and not exactly like any other movie I’ve seen—but the crude tools of language force my brain to “round to the nearest bucket” and choose the word that most closely resembles my actual impression, and that’s the information you’ll receive from me.”

Since I am writing this for baseline and near baseline pithecine, I’m obviously limited to linear, written language while describing this topic, but I’ll do my best to outline the actual issues with language today and then try to paint a picture of what the future could hold.

For humble pithecines, verbal language, and its noble cousin the written form, is the best they have for coordinating resources with others on the fly. From "Let’s hang out this weekend" to "Let’s get a coffee to talk about that presentation that we’ve got to give next month." to "Can you hand me the sugar?"

It’s even how they coordinate themselves: "I shouldn’t have said that last night! I’ve got to remember to keep my mouth shut when his name comes up! "

It’s how they connect and convey ideas: "I love you" or "I’m very sorry".

They have things like video, photos, or body language, and while they are significant, but the predominant way they communicate ideas or coordination widely (or with themselves) on a daily basis is through spoken or written word.

Verbal and written language are very difficult to master (not to mention the difficulty in mastering things like video capture or body language).

Learning to speak and articulate simple thoughts is one thing. Writing an eloquent essay or conversing flawlessly is more akin to the challenge of writing music — a note in the wrong place can throw off the entire melody in the same way that a wrong word or phrase can lead to a major miscommunication or a misinterpretation… one that throws off the flow of the idea, conversation, or sometimes entire relationship.

The task of communicating verbally gets even harder with real-time, in person communication than it is with the written word. With music, we all understand that it’s very hard to be a great composer. We don’t walk down the street and expect everyone to be a great composer. However, for some illogical reason, Pithecines expect each other to use verbal and written communication near-perfectly or at least very well. Pithecines are punitive and legalistic about it; they don’t much care what people meant per se, they care about the exact words they chose so they can hold them to it. Proficiency is their baseline expectation — putting every right word in its right place and said the right way. Outside of a few forgiven mistakes, they expect people to continuously string their articulated thoughts, experiences, or ideas together with the fluidity of a neatly-arranged song. If they don’t fully understand a concept or empathize with an experience, it’s the concept or experience that’s at fault — not the communication attempt.

Eloquence is rare. High verbal proficiency is quite difficult to master. For the most part, there is not much forgiveness or patience for those that don’t meticulously watch every word. Expectations don’t match the reality or rarity of proficiency.

Verbal and written communication are both still limited, even once mastered.

These forms of communication are not just hard to master, they are still very clumsy once you do. In other words, like a unicycle is both hard to master, and there’s very little nobility in mastering it — because it also turns out that it’s a very inefficient vehicle to travel around in, even for a master of it. You see what I did there, I used metaphor as a shortcut to communicate, due to the clumsy inexact nature of language.

Verbal and written communication are clumsy like the unicycle because they are linear, and yet the world is not linear. Look around the room you’re in. It’s not linear. It’s didn’t happen line by line. It’s all happening all the time — and it would takes an eternity just to describe everything that’s happening in a room to another person with words. Describing the world in words is like trying to sow the ocean together. The tools don’t actually match the task they’re given — And yet try, like the poet, to say what can’t be said.

There’s about 600 years of recent philosophical thought just on linguistics that dive even deeper into this topic, these limitations explain a little of the frustration felt. Or when you explain a new idea to your boss and think "she just doesn’t get it!" when they don’t give you the budget or the permission for the idea.

Consider what would be like to move through the world without verbal or written communication.

Infants and pets live like this every day. Before an infant can talk, they’re in a phase known as “pre-verbal.” This is when they experience what Freudian psychologists call the "oceanic" feeling: the inability to distinguish objects, including themselves, as separate from one another. In the same way that we don’t distinguish different waves from the ocean in which they occur, an infant in this stage doesn’t distinguish objects or events as being separate from one another. It’s all just one, indistinguishable, and interconnected world — similar to how we see one ocean. You see what I did there again? I use metaphor as a shortcut to understanding made necessary due to the clumsy inexact nature of language.

During this time they begin to use other forms of perception and communication to understand and interact with the world around them. Things like crying when they’re uncomfortable, seeing a smile and feeling safe, feeling warmth, laughing when they see something unexpected (though concurrent with other interactions with the world like feeling safe).

This phase can lead to a lot of extremely cute occurrences. They can still give and receive human connection in these first two to three years (in fact, this is so extreme early on that the definition of the oceanic feeling is that they quite literally aren’t aware of a concept of “disconnection” from other objects or people around them). Though they don’t know the sounds and words we later teach them as symbols for these feelings, they can still experience peace and love. They can also experience a lot of frustration when desires or discomforts are not adequately addressed.

Pithecine Infants are typically hurried out of this phase, either externally by parents trying to activate the useful faculty of verbal communication, or internally activated from the pain of unexpressed and unfulfilled desires that the infant feels.

The infant grows into a child. The child enters the verbal-world; where he or she persists in a fumbling environment of trying to learn from others (often through communication), what it is they "should" want and pursue, while bumping into others their age that are being told the same things, and then learn (again, often through the use of verbal communication), how to get that "thing" they think they want (a grade, a status, a paycheck, a house, etc.) — then learn at 40 or 50 or 80 years old that what they really want is to return to the world and basic feelings that they had when they were pre-verbal, where they realize the grade, the status, the paycheck, and the house is just a symbol of what they actually wanted (i.e., to be loved, valued, safe, warm, and to experience occasional fun, unexpected events). All the feelings that coexisted with the oceanic feeling.

Oceanic adulthood…

What would a world look like where we could read the (consensually volunteered) thoughts of a mid-pubescent pithecine child telepathically?

What would a world look like where coordination is achieved, desires met, and where we don’t need language? A world in which we no longer need verbal, linear, and clumsy mediums of communication. We may still use them episodically either for situations that require it specifically.

Something very much like the oceanic feeling but for adults because linear language creates, and the constant chatter of our minds exacerbates, separateness as individuals "separate" from our environment.

Internal language frames our mindsets and internal dialogue as much as it frames a conversation with a friend.

These thoughts are typically expressed about things like a neural link are predominantly concerned with communication as if it’s only a medium used between people. That is not the only way language is employed. It’s not even the predominant way it’s employed. It’s also coursing through your brain like the blood in your veins. It is the constant internal chatter that plays out scenarios in our heads before they happen. When not utilizing our lingual communication between others, we’re conversing with ourselves, chopping up what just happened, what might happen, what was said, what you will say in the future, etc.

Language, in both internal and external communication, slices up the world into separate parts — like a subject, a verb, an adjective, an object, the occasional adverb and preposition, and so on.

"Anne walks down the street"… Western language particularly emphasizes the separateness of a noun from a verb. "He" is separate from the "walking" In Eastern languages, such as Mandarin, nouns and verbs are often conjoined to convey the inseparability of the two.

"Lightning flashes." It is only a matter of speech and modern English language that splits up this phrase into a subject and a verb. It’s such a strong notion, and affects how we view the world to such an extent because of our social conditioning, that the typical person understandably interprets this thing-event as a noun or subject acting in a way that produces a flash. But this is a linguistic illusion since there is no subject different from the verb. The lightning doesn’t "flash" — as there is no separation from the lightning and the flash. You cannot have lightning without the flash.

In visual observation, "a man walking down the street" is all one occurrence to our eyes — but in re-telling the story or talking about it in our heads, we separate these things because in linear communication, we must separate and chop up an occurrence into separate words and separate parts to tell a story verbally to a friend. Visually, it’s all one occurrence, but communicated verbally later, it necessarily becomes linear.

Stories, like language itself, massively influence, shape, and even hypnotize our perception of the world. Like the person up on stage hypnotized into absolute conviction about something that isn’t there, language (nouns, verbs, linear communication) is the building block for story-telling (hero, opposition, conflict, victory in the context of potential tragedy), and these linear means of discussion or entertainment are as subtle as they are powerful in shaping the way we perceive the world (and our world).

This "chopping" would be fine if it was limited to something as trivial as re-telling an event on your way to work or as seemingly inconsequential as a bedtime story from a parent. But that’s not where this framework-applied-to-the-world stops.

The Pithecine obsession with language (to connect and to communicate with others) extends deeply into how they think about themselves — how we tell themselves "Oh wow, I did something stupid back there" or "Why can’t I be like them?? " or "Why is this happening? "

I, I, I… them, him, her… this, that, or the other happened to me. This lingual breakup of the world leads to a view of "I’m separate from the environment and these things that are happening to me."

Instead of it all just "happening" in a dynamic, interconnected way in a way that an ecologist would observe biosphere.

Language, a useful tool for future coordination, is utilized to an unhealthy degree in pithecine minds to constantly coordinate the future.

Modern pithecine language began about 50-70 thousand years ago, primarily driven by its usefulness in coordinating efforts or resources between multiple humans, or maybe merely gossip. It was a marginally more efficient for instruction than simply slapping young people until they got it right. Since it’s the same primary tool they then adopt for inside our own heads, they tend to employ it quietly in our minds for that same future-oriented coordination.

Idle hands + the possession of a hammer = everything is a nail.

In their idleness, like the hammer, we employ language to coordinate a little more than we need ("I should make a reservation for dinner") and then a little more ("I should write that email or maybe I should find them in person") and then a little more ("I wonder where we should move if we have kids") until they accidentally hammer things that aren’t nails and then try to fix the mess by more hammering ("should I tell her that I’m not going to take it anymore on Monday? What if there’s an earthquake? I should eat healthier!").

Language is an adequate servant, but a terrible master. They become involved, and their wits and worries only have a coordination tool to interpret and solve the problems.

This leads to an obsession about the future, leaving less capable to truly absorb the present (since the hammer is just looking for more nails).

In a world driven by a brain-connected interface, do you know what’s really good at logistics, multi-variable computing, and coordination? Software.

This primary role of the mind and its relationship with language, will be a role that artificial intelligence and a brain-computer interface would be uniquely designed to perform much better than they are by themselves.

I personally expect it to end badly. The massive access to information, raw data, and news thru the interweb was thought to make the pithecine world smarter and more empathetic.

With “conceptual language”, the information communicated would be more complete, clear, and instantaneous.

A verbal/written message is easily compromised by the two main principles in delivery: the messenger and the medium.

Much of this is for the reasons mentioned above around the difficulty to master, or the inherent clumsiness of language — but another way to highlight this is the advice often given people speaking in front of a crowd: "It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it."

The often-said cliché is an admission that the primary element of communication with others is not the information but rather the appearance and presentation of the message. In other words, confidence can mask a shaky message. Or said another way, a wavering delivery will nullify the value of a message, no matter the integrity of the information itself.

This may be the case for many relevant reasons to verbal communication and an audience’s capacity to absorb this kind of communication at length, but it’s no longer relevant for a world where the communication is 3-dimensional, full-formed, and instant — where there is no longer a constant battle or wage for your attention with your efficiency or lack thereof with words. Instead of an Amazon package being delivered through a coffee straw, it would be instant “transmutation” of the complete thought, idea, or experience that you’re communicating.

This departure from current forms of communication would then not lean on the messenger in the way that communication today requires an artful uploading and downloading of the idea in your head into the head of another (that implicitly requires several factors to align, like speaking the same language, articulation, attention, time, etc.).

The post-verbal world would be influenced by the most complete ideas — not the most charismatic messengers.

It is dependent upon sophisticated artificial intelligence to make up for the deficiencies of the operator, that won’t end well.

The best and most complete ideas would be “transmuted” and the populist or sycophant would be outed immediately based on a lack of depth and completeness of their ideas. Like someone swindled into a viewpoint based on a "drip" of information and a belief and hope that there is a payoff, you would discover that the packaging is missing the package (shoutout to all the ‘Lost’ fans out there, or Scientologists dying to hear about Level “OT 8” after paying enough dues).

These grifters and swindlers wouldn’t be pariahs by any means — they just wouldn’t be the dominant forces of narrative in the world we live in. You would just prefer ideas, coordination, or experiences that delivered the "package" completely and instantly.

More connection, more presence…

A post-verbal world would be one with less separateness, of more complete ideas, spreading globally (and activating coordination for them) over weeks and months rather than years (or in the case of things like democracy or absolution of slavery; taking centuries to spread).

When you add up the compounding effects stated above, I believe we would live in more harmony with each other, dehypnotized from the idea that we are individual selves living "outside" of rather than "inside" the world around us — less distracted by inefficient and constant human coordination for the future (assisted by computational efficiency that does it for us). Like a software program (human coordination) running on inefficient hardware moving to extremely efficient hardware, it’s hard for me to imagine an important human vector that would not be impacted positively (coordination, efficiency, prosperity, peace, health, and obviously education to name a few).

This could be as transformational of a leap for our species comparable to what we saw as we went from non-verbal to verbal. What verbal communication did for the cavemen, the tribe, the community — post-verbal communication would do for the now connected human race.

It obviously would not be a utopia free of death, disease, decay, or tragedy. Bad things would still happen.

But whatever this world would look like, we’d be in it together. If harmony is just a realized interdependence on each other’s well-being, efficient coordination of human logistics, and an aversion to plans and ideas that are of disservice to these two things, then maybe our current plague of poorly formed ideas (the world is flat), the inefficient communication of good ones (the world is round), and our perception of hyper-individual existence would be inoculated by this human-computer device that removes the veil. A veil that doesn’t cover our eyes, but one that covers our ears.

And when you think deeply and fully about the "costs" and what could hang in the balance if direct conceptual communication was unlocked for the human race.

When Socrates was asked why he didn’t write anything down, he replied by saying that "writing is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. "

The beauty of this brave, new, harmonized world would simply be this — that whatever exists in our connected and collective mind would never have to leave it.

Instead of the clumsy and inexact approximation of ideas and concepts represented by words, especially difficult to describe deep experience or abstract philosophical concepts, what would the future look like if there was some sort of directly brain computer interface neural link that could communicate a concept directly without the need for low-resolution low-bandwidth clumsy and inexact approximation of a concept in mere thought-buckets.

Words are an approximation of a thought-buckets that a whole category of similar-but-distinct thoughts can all be shoved into. If I watch a horror movie and want to describe it to you in words, I’m stuck with a few simple low-resolution thought-buckets —'scary' or 'creepy' or 'chilling' or 'intense', or more specific and florid that I thought I might lose bladder or bowel control. But those words describe my reaction, not really describing the cause of said reaction. The actual impression of that movie is very specific and not exactly like any other movie I’ve seen—but the crude tools of language force my brain to round to the nearest thought-bucket and choose the word that most closely resembles my actual impression, and that’s the information you’ll receive from me. Bottom line, you had to be there, and you have to see the movie for yourself.

Verbal and written language are the predominant ways in which we connect with those around us, coordinate with others, and convey ideas. While verbal communication was revolutionary to Telestials 50 to 70 thousand years ago, and written communication was revolutionary to Telestials 7000 years ago, it is still a clumsy means to spread ideas that exists in one mind into another.

Working with graphic artists and culinary artists, the limitations of language comes up a lot. It is especially difficult to explain using words how difficult it is to explain something using the words especially in trying to explain complex concepts like a deep emotional experience, or an abstract philosophical concept, or a wholly subjective experience.

It is difficult to explain red or salty to someone who does not already know what those are, words are not equipped to do perform this task.

We’ve all been there, trying our hardest to do that with a friend, loved one, student, colleague, or stranger, that, instead of ‘transmutation’ of a concept or idea, communicating an idea or viewpoint through language is actually quite difficult and oftentimes seemingly impossible.

Verbal and written communication are both still limited, even once mastered. This is why writers get paid money, because it is difficult to master.

Most popular entertainment media represents telepathic experiences as in listening in on the target’s inner dialogue. Garudan studies of telepathic species and individuals shows that most telepathic exchanges are felt, sometimes images, more often a replay of an experience.

Telestians pithecines are not innately telepathic, and have evolved an excessive dependence upon verbal and later written communication. While they have done well with developing symbolic processing such as math and sciences, it has hampered their ability to received telepathic messaging.

Because of the bicameral architecture of Telestial pithecine brains, except for certain gifted or afflicted individuals, most are only able to receive telepathic brain to brain direct communications thru the medium of dream states. This is probably why most sothothic entities consider Telestians pithecines to be a primitive species. Ironically, as most Sothothic entities communicate primarily thru brain to brain direct communications, they have not developed verbal communications which Telestial pithecine are accustomed to, thus Telestial pithecine consider most sothothic entities to be animalistic in nature.

Thus many Sothothic entities communicate using the medium of dreams. This sadly often ends poorly, as while in their dreaming state, Pithecines are highly suggestible. They are transmitting direct experiences or conceptualizations. Telestial pithecine pre post-verbal minds and means/methods of communications are beneath Sothoths, this is how they communicate, and Telestial pithecine are just too dull to get it.

Some Sothothic entities, such as Deep Ones, have substantial experiences dealing with us pre post-verbal Telestial Pithecines, but they deal with piths with the same level of frustration as I do trying to communicate to a cat or dog (and vice versa). I suspect that Mi-Go, Yithians and Valusian Serpent People have some experience dealing with pre post-verbal like Telestial Pithecines. It is primitive, they would prefer not to, but they can do it. I have noticed that Great Cthulhu, Gla’aki, and others are exclusively post-verbal and they don’t care if the piths don't 'get it'. If you go insane, die angry (and mad), they don’t care. The sun does not care, nor the wind, nor does Cthulhu. They view pithecines as primitive creatures in much the same way dogs cannot help grammar check or spell-check essays, they are just not equipped.

Sothothic studies do not posit that aliens (Juxta-Telestials) have the same type of mental processes as the rest of us. Trees process information using chemicals, not symbolic representation. Ants, bees, and termites process information and communicate in a profoundly different way than each other and us. Pithecines are not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation with these post-verbal species, in much the same way that Piths won’t have a meaningful conversation (as they commonly experience it) with a tree, an ant colony, bee hive, or termite mound who employ a different means to communicate. It is a difference in language way beyond any so-called universal translator.

When Socrates was asked why he didn’t write anything down, he replied by saying that "writing is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind." I imagine the Sothothic Post-Verbal species have the same view of us pre Post-Verbal species.

Another time, I will condense my notes about the Sleepwalker theory and some modern socio-biology theories that posit that Pithecine (hyoomons) are neither sentient and maybe not even truly conscious, much less have the capacity for individuality and free will. That theye might be only sentient and conscious in the way that an ant colony or bee hive is; except with the toxic illusion of individuality. Why piths have to be taught to see the color blue. I am not saying it is true, I am merely positing it as a theory for how Sothothic creatures might view humble hyoomons.