Tag Archives: language

FTAC – Computing and Universalism

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Spychology, Politics, Psychology

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From the blog earlier today: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/01/08/fns-nsa-senior-executives-memo-to-obama/ Our empirical and engineering mentalities in government may want to view terrorists as free radicals attaching themselves to distinctly bad ideas, “radical Islam” the most active, and then, probably because there’s a lot of in-house and contractor money in high tech R&D, they want massive computing to filter the humans likely to be the “bombs on two legs” (thanks, I think, to Alex Braverman for first using that term in a piece of fiction. Maybe not. I’m ageing).

The problem is the poison needs examination in concert with what may be known about language, perception, attitude, and behavior, a complex area for study. As far as I’m concerned, mention of, say, the Banu Qurayza or Aafia Sidiqui and quiet listening to how they’re spoken about should suffice for litmus as to who has repudiated facets of Islam, in behavior, even if not articulated specifically (e.g., as regards the validity of Surah 9:29, for example) and who really believe in the eventual imposition of dhimmi status and taxes and the conversion or slaughter of infidels.

What the American government wants is in part the universalism known to Jewry: if an idea about mankind is to work in theory, to be validated and integrated with knowledge, it has to work universally. Is there a relationship between marathon bombers and abortion clinic bombers — and the Unibomber or, perhaps, Charles Manson? I think there is and have placed “malignant narcissism”, a characteristic in personality, at the base. Of course, what that does is form a Janus between the dictator and a kind of revolutionary counterpoised, e.g., Assad : AQ-types in the Syrian revolution; and from Egypt, Mobarak : Muslim Brotherhood. Different talk — same walk.

The Boston Globe ran a wrap-up on the Tsarnaev Brothers today: Boston Marathon bombings could provide insight into other killings – Opinion – The Boston Globe – 1/8/2014.  Posted to my status bar, it brought the complaint that Americans and the American domestic security establishment just don’t get it: ” . . .  because we are too stupid to understand that terrorists really mean to kill us and only because they hate us.”

I should think contempt inseparable from an unchecked narcissism, and hate and its related butchery inseparable from the compound formed around here of “civilizational narcissism” (Haider Mobarak’s pet) and “malignant narcissism”, both of which have been addressed repeatedly on this blog.

Regard the reference to the NSA, can and will “the terrorist” signal be found and distilled from language by capable computers?  Part of the answer is as above at least as regards the pools of candidates: slip some litmus into the conversation and see what colors come up in relation to it.

If the sifting is passive, watch for characteristic signal signatures like “crusader west” in traffic.

If we accept that the democratic free speech concept specifically protects discomforting political speech, including hate speech, which is what we do in the U.S., then separating the mouths with the bad attitudes from those who will operationalize their ideas becomes a little more challenging, the packaging of the sociopathic content being contained in many aspects of expression not signaled by exploiting a specific rhetoric rendered recognizable through its repeated phrases.

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A good listener, imho (and just because I think so), applies analog and metaphor to what he hears as he hears it.  In essence, the listening is turned toward implication, which in turn requires imagination and a nimble mind for the poetry — i.e., the internal established and potential relationships threaded into the metonymy of the language of interest.

Empathy helps.

Manufacturing a computer that “listens” to language and queries as rapidly as data arrives is just about speed and parsing; getting to an appliance that “listens well” and, in a sense, listens ahead of the speaker’s thoughts, well, for that, you have to hire somebody like me.

🙂

In fact, call me “a piece of work” in that regard, and I’ll take it as a compliment.

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FTAC – The Problems of an Honest Life – and Syria

02 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Politics

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The inspiring passage posted:

“O you who believe! Be upholders of justice, bearing witness for Allah alone, even against yourselves or your parents and relatives. Whether they are rich or poor, Allah is well able to look after them. Do not follow your own desires and deviate from the truth. If you twist or turn away, Allah is aware of what you do.” (Surat an-Nisa’: 135)

My response:

I always enjoy this passage on two grounds: 1) common law seems to recognize that close relations or obligated relations may not tell the truth or, just as importantly, listen fairly, so in courts, prospective witnesses and jury members may be examined for attitudinal or relationship bias in advance of trial: the upshot is it may be a little more ideal than realistic and ideal; 2) Muhammad recognized both the problem posed and power associated with dishonest or disingenuous speech. “Do not follow your own desires and deviate from the truth” slips power to the speaker, for it could have been stated, “Follow your own desires but do not deviate from the truth. Be always honest.”

The one variable to which all of the warfare and suffering we are witnessing from within the Muslim-majority states of the world troubled by violence or political unrest and scandal distills to one word: integrity.

How the use of language and the value of integrity differs from one geopolitical space to another is a large topic but one generally pitting acquisitiveness, fear, greed, and loyalty against a perhaps privileged altruistic idealism.

Am I suggesting that all that dying and suffering in Syria (and similar elsewheres) is about integrity?

Yes.

Unfair dealing would seem to characterize both opposed systems, the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad and the breathtaking brutality of the equally autocratic and full of itself al-Nusra and associates (elsewhere dictators in power vs. dictators challenging power).

Neither have good to offer and both approach battle mounted on lies and misdirection.

It is no wonder that the conflict in Syria (and those elsewhere) has generated a heart wrenching flight within the state and without, for no one not engaged in the purpose of battle has any life interest in it either apart from plain corporeal survival.

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FTAC – Another Thought on Programming and Scripting

20 Friday Dec 2013

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. . . religion may layer above other language-derived and driven social programming, so obtaining a reform with buy-in in any part may entail driving down into more deeply embedded thought processes and social procedures derived in relation to fetal and infantile listening and signal discernment.

Political and religious axis may present comparatively sophisticated “content scripts” — once we know how to figure out what’s important in our earliest years, we may then start learning more about our environments in language or as language cultures.

If we pick up a program rule, e.g., what happens in the family stays in the family, we may then bend speech to suit it. The example given and involving privacy and a common boundary where families are nuclear may be part of a near universal experience, but private relationships may also be deeply extended and some combine of other values enforced, including some having to do with loyalty and silence foremost, contempt for others close by, and concerns for good conduct and integrity nulled as regards outsiders.

I suspect the “cavemen” not so burdened by these considerations and, perhaps with the young like teens everywhere, more quick to assert themselves than to comprehend themselves.

A cultures laws, religion, and tradition may seem comprehensive and rich in design and deployment while actually expression less observed — for being omnipresent — habits of language and mind.

From the instant the fetus experiences sound, the organism has a pleasant survival-oriented task that it may attend essentially without distraction: our baby experiences . . . experience through the mother’s chemistry, his own, and through the ears.

We’re born listeners even if we may not seem to be listening while oscillating between gurgles and howls and sleep.

What’s in the air in the environment, whether sweet music or sharp tongues, the bang of explosions, the susurration or a breeze bothering leafy branches, gets into the head, and the match with language gets figured out as may relative social values and manners of use, what to say and how to say it when and to whom.

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Language as a behavior and narcissism as expressive of self-concept associated with language behavior provide two conceptual tools for taking apart the drivers in personality that energize and sustain the intellectual or content-rich scripts involved in speech in conflict processes.  I would suggest that it’s the underlying language programming, which is of wild invention within a cultural “development boundary” — the edge of the tribal land — rather than the overlaid script that produces war when war, itself a behavior, is heavily dependent on ideas about cultural and personal realities.

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FTAC – A Note on Early Language Programming and Scripting

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Psychology

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They’re not awful people — they’re just programmed that way. 🙂 What has got my interest today — as soon as I settle down from shooting someone else’s artwork a little later — is the difference between language programming — the methods we use to discern and invest meaning in symbols and their arrangements — and “scripting” which I think of as the ranting content overlaying the programming. These guys who boast, brag, cajole, and threaten and wind themselves up around violence and death belie their humanity when they ask for help, would that they would do it sooner!

Changing scripts may be easy — it’s what copywriters and poets do — compared to getting to the reception programming, but that’s where our battle actually exists. Everything else is surface noise.

The source of the inspiration for the above note: The Jewish Press » » Dead Gaza BDS Advocate Sought Israeli Medical Care – 12/19/2013.

Early language uptake programming and scripting — methods in listening and cognition : environmental content filtered and signified — deserves a page, at least.  I’m sure there are academic volumes written around the themes, but in relation to conflict, one wants as distilled and schematic a concept as possible.

Addendum

The poisoned and amplified focus on a broad array of targets, Israel foremost but much else with similar prejudice. This energy channeled into and expended on malicious thought is something humans do but perhaps in a fated way, a wild invented way, that becomes cultural habit.

I don’t know if the world knows to confront or, actually, delve into basic language uptake issues in relation to conflict.

It both delights and pains me to know that if you “Google” the string “conflict metonymy”, my blog shows up fourth on the first page of results. Unbelievable! What are the institutions doing? And what am I doing without funding?!

🙂

This gets better with the behavioral definition of “backchannels” as opposed to a more symbolic words-behind-the-words : cognitive hallucination : emotion approach. Someone’s making good money looking into the meaning of “hmmm” and “uh huh” and I’m playing that old “glass beads game” with the gravity, weight, and stability of relationships between nouns.

We might get ahead of ourselves with computers, but that’s another line and a bit sci-fi, but for conflict attenuation, the earliest complement to the construction of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, i.e., programming on one hand and scripting on the other, seems to me where attention should go (and I would like to be included when the research money catches on).

So it goes (nodding to Vonnegut while nonetheless turning away from the New Old Now Old Lost and Far Out Left) and much preferring Everett’s reporting to Chomsky’s asserting.

Confession, also: I haven’t read Hesse’s Magister Ludi since college and haven’t a clue as to what I may have absorbed from it, if anything but the notion that symbols offer themselves to play and some players their work with evil designs.

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FTAC – Islam vs. Islam vs. (Yawn) Everyone Else – A Note

22 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Politics, Psychology

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“However, you all know the answer to the above questions. The painful truth is that much of the world is largely insensitive to the oppression and sufferings of Muslims” — the statement is not true, or I and so many others would not be engaged here at all. Every Muslim death matters! That the carnage involves Muslim-on-Muslim violence, however, makes every form of cooperation, criticism, and intervention difficult and problematic.

Just back of Harun Yahya’s statement lays a hidden grammatical rule involving the concept of loyalty that is true to the speaker but perhaps not every reader. The statement sides with Muslims on a familiar but provocative and timeless note: “it is more important, more safe, more good or good-feeling, to be with one’s own (on the basis of a single noun) than to be uncertain among others however decent and noble they may appear.” As much echoes the notion that it may be better to believe or tell a loyal lie than to live with an uncomfortable reality and truth.

Note that in the American Civil War, both sides held The Bible high in defense of their positions; perhaps similar ambiguity and ambivalence attends philosophy over the Qur’an; and it may be noted that Judaism involves itself eagerly in schismatic argument, but in Judaism, that’s part of the charm (look up “Hillel and Shammai”).

Values associated with the greater dignity of man, ennoblement — “One scholar is worth more against the devil . . . .” — may persist through the Ummah’s internal fighting and its interfaces, and I hope they do — but Islam’s travail ties to language behaviors and concepts largely irrelevant to others developed and engaged in living in other ways, largely nullifying the legitimacy of messianic intention, the mighty spark of “political Islam”.

My words.

The inspirational source (apart From the Awesome Conversation): Muslims must be valued as they deserve | The Jakarta Post – by Harun Yahya, Istanbul – 11/22/2013.

“Bigotry” is a loyalty-related issue bound up in the social grammar of one talking head or another within some population.  Reasonable and reasoning human beings contain themselves; nasty people may bait and provoke the reasonable; and nasty bigoted people cannot help themselves: with those, it’s “garbage in-garbage out” and the garbage probably gets in very, very early in the development of their verbal cognitive style to form the basis for the subsequent content and manners that erupt in their speech.

(For diversion, visit the old blog — “N-Word Metonymy – Richards, Schlessinger in Context”).

As of this moment, the Islamic Small Wars (ISWs) have nothing to do with how Jews think about Muslims, how Americans think about Muslims, how Buddhists and Hindus and Sudanese animists think about Muslims, or how Islamic Humanists think about Muslims, or even how Muslims think about Muslims.  The ISWs have to do with assumptive thinking seeded into the mind at a very early age and bending adult thought in a rule-based way for a long time to come.

Without a language update, without the fresh breeze of free, considerate, and empathetic thought, without the good and sweet rest of imagination and heart and preparation, perhaps, for something a little different and much, much better, the Muslim-on-Muslim destruction and self-destruction (in myriad ways, much including the drugs-for-guns criminality of the Taliban) will continue.

Relentlessly.

Let it stop sooner rather than later.

Now would not be too soon.

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FTAC – More Than 7,000 Ways of Addressing the World

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion

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In the arts, we may refer to a certain state in performance as contained and connected and that with God, nature, and the universe.  — put together some observations in psychology — Ecstasy: a Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences (1961). I happen to think our Homo sapiens sapiens is as wild a species as any but with a large brain and a phenomenal mouth, and one has proven capable of great creativity and intuition and the other of aiding the invention of languages (of which there are more than 7,000 separable extant as I type in just one) and language culture, each of the thousands embracing and entertaining one form of divinity or another.

Mine (edited lightly).

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In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to writing that was more poetic and expressive. I also wanted a more viable balance between my work with words and my work with wood, especially furniture for worship settings.

William J. Everett’s Blog | Reflections on Writing, Woodworking, and Ethics

Human life (actually for those bedding down on Siberian ledges to watch the sunset, bear life too) entails, whether we or the bears like it or not, an aesthetic and spiritual emotional and emotive experience.

That’s life.

The wonder is how many approaches have been adopted, created, discovered, embraced, invented, and modified in service to those experiences.

Betwixt and between, then and now, but then I turned a first graduate degree toward facets of the experience of leisure time — boredom, ecstasy,flow, motivation, peak experiences, self-concept, self-as-entertainer, etc. — and among the predicates were youth, mountains, and music.

Not much has changed about me, but my views have been broadened, and here in the blogland of “conflict, culture, language, and psychology”, it may be worth taking a moment while fighting rages in Syria, Iran struggles to obtain The Bomb, and terror drips into everyday life somewhere in Iraq and Pakistan on a daily to weekly basis that our humanity is of just one species and that species, about 7.124 billion in number, communicates by way of more than 7,000 languages, each addressing the aesthetic and spiritual percepts of its speakers.

We should not be fighting.

We should be awed.

Briefest Introductory Reference

Abraham Maslow

Daniel Everett

Ethnologue

Joseph Campbell

Marghanita Laski

William James

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FTAC – A Note on Language Invented and Sustained “Habits of Mind”

03 Sunday Nov 2013

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Language may be the cultural tool that we invent to invent and sustain ourselves in coherent isolated societies. Very few societies — language cultures, all — remain purely themselves given encounters with conflict, including invasion, and with expanding trade relationships. For western onlookers involved with the Islamic Small Wars, the Sunni-Shiite schism and much else have been only latent to western popular knowledge and not latent at all in the minds of the owners of each respective legacy who are now the captives of their own archaic thought as contained by old language and, indeed, related “habits of mind”.

The Islamic Small Wars will end with poetry, not bullets, with freedom from archaic language, not subjugation, with mere human equality — and with “compassion, humility, inclusion, and integrity — and not the delusions of grandeur associated with supremacist hegemony.

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All of the above . . . because I say so.

😉

The full brief would be lengthier and more complicated, but suffice it to say that what has happened in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere along the links of the Islamic Small Wars owns no place other than the past among the world’s nations.  The enthused fighting in Syria, however vigorous, becomes also more socially incoherent and subject to individual and small group interests by the day, and similarly motivated fighting and “struggle” elsewhere seem not to prove any better as regards gaining traction in their districts.

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FTAC – Good, Evil, Language Metonymy and Social Grammar

04 Friday Oct 2013

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The science experiment preceding the comment involved measurements of attitude affected by first introducing participants to short collections of words that might have an impact on subsequent perception of other subjects.

I thought the science silly, actually, but it lent itself to the kernel, which at this point for me seems iterative.

The “priming” referred to in the article attaches to two fundamental concepts in the cultural perception of good and evil: language metonymy and social grammar. To delve into one may involve dipping into linguistics and poetry and the other wants for focus on the processing of cultural and social signals in infancy’s language acquisition period.

In essence, science still gives us a glimpse of what may be known empirically and religion becomes the mirror of cultural expression, imagination, and invention. “Good”, from such a clinical perspective, becomes what culture and language have become together across time for the set of constituent speakers.

Two enjoyable reference in this area: Daniel Everett’s Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes and Language: The Cultural Tool.

I cannot emphasize the idea too much that a romantic combat signals the poetic arrangement of symbols suspended in language and woven around the fighter’s own self-concept and image.

When one has cause to denote the pen mightier than the sword, doing so recognizes that good and evil, beauty and sophistry, guidance and misguidance involve the speech of either healthy or poisonous tongues and then an accurate or inaccurate assessment of states of affairs.

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We humans don’t live through our organics: rather, we live with them and at times, this with age especially so, barely tolerate them; where we actually live is within the mouth-ear-mind-heart system that we use to tell ourselves about ourselves and others and the world.

If we’re to find greatness and heroism within ourselves and our ranks, it’s in that vessel woven out of strings of words fashioned like steel; if we’re to be disheartened or humbled, it may be through the deformation or shattering of those same strings, and then perhaps for their being either too rigid to withstand a little pressure or too gimp with receiving a load of confusion to keep their own best form.

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