Talk Illuminates the Mental Board

talk illuminates the mental board:

such was a time when talk was magical and wonderful, for it confirmed we were not alone. it is in essence why we talk, we don't want to be alone. to contend with the idea that you might be alone is a miserable experience. is anyone who suspects solipsism might be true happy? the concept that within the reality there is only one person. of course there might be other people but they would be in separate realities surely, not connected at all?

but given that there may be many people in this reality, each a head containing consciousness, the prospect becomes intimidating, does it not? the situation is complex. if each head were like a lollipop contained in its own zone of personal space, the space of this reality is littered with lollipops, stuck forever in place. through whatever the real process is, the lollipops can communicate with the other lollipops, and talking is the most obvious form. now presumably, the lollipops next to you are the ones most familiar to you, let's assume distance has a real effect, even though some communications may keep integrity over large distances. and probably you share values and language after so many years together. this localization makes those far away, those beyond your neighbours, perhaps hundreds of degrees of separation away in space, seem almost alien.

beyond the initial joy of not being alone and having someone to talk to, complications inevitably arise. each has its own values, what is good and what is bad, and to what degree. you might argue there are universal values and this is true, like death is bad, whatever death is, as we who are living cannot truly define death, it remains a vague original fear in the mind. of course those who live on earth now have another incarnation and death holds a modern meaning now, different from what it originally meant. i don't think the original fear is ever lost though. and so the problem becomes what to make of opposing values.

outright hostility because of it seems the threat. if i hate something and you like it, does that not mean i hate you? that is the premise of the fear associated with talk. if we assume there are a lot of people, and they act as a buffer, it perhaps just means indifference in actuality. if we can preserve at least civility with our closest neighbours, perhaps in the final judgement, disagreement with those far away does not matter much.

for talk reveals our values, it cannot not do so. generally, we speak of things we like most of all, unless we be toxic containers of hate spewing thoughts of what we don't. if we conceive of a mental board indicating that that we think is good and what is bad, the other person talking to us has a real effect. if they think something is good also, we feel they confirm our opinion, again the sense that we are not alone.

of course, there are other things apart from personal curiosity about the other person, we like to learn truths from others, and we want them to make us believe things are not as bad as we think, and of course day to day we talk about what we do. also, as it is as sound, like music, talk is an art, it may have a quality not easily defined, and is more than just the functional exchange of ideas.

CLEARCHARGE