Out of Pod Experience

If, as the linguist claims, these new forms of internet-speak arise to mirror a confusion of emotion, then I wonder if that is actually symptomatic of an increasingly emotionally immature populace. They can't say how they feel, not because they feel more or more rapidly than other generations, but because they understand so much less or have been trained to be dishonest about their emotions.

For example, people don't touch each other any more. Pats on the back, embraces, even handshakes are viewed through a twisted lens of sexualization, in more than one direction. Add in heaping shovels of political correctness and we're teaching a whole generation that not only can they not say what they feel, they shouldn't feel it in the first place.

Even for less contentious things like how well or poorly received a meal is, people are driven to express over-simplifications where it is either one or the other. {insert rant about how I remember when things actually were "excellent" or "awesome"}

Culturally, we've been taught that our feelings define all things, so we attempt to find emotional significance, a sense of the epic, in all things. It is not emotional advancement, but emotional infantilism and a suppression of reason and critical thinking.

Somewhere, somehow, there's someone on my lawn and I am desirous of their removal.

...and Doge > LOLCat

I find the difference between US and some parts of Europe can be adequately demonstrated by this NSFW german ad from 1998 … and the fact that I felt compelled to put a NSFW tag to warn americans that they're about to see boobies.

I thought the linguist had a decent sense of humor. She spotted "something going on" and had both the skills and qualifications to analyze it.

The blogger owes a great deal to the linguist, but his observations aren't without merit.

Personally I find some of the plays on grammar fascinating (like doge). I enjoy encountering new phrases with fun cargo like "never not..." Watching the language drift in ways that go beyond local dialects is really interesting, I think.

Well, nowadays communication can be seen as a constant battle against the already present overstimulation of the audience. Adjectives are primarily used in form of their superlatives or made-up higher forms, "always", "nobody", "everywhere" are used against better judgement and a lot of words are abandoned due to suspicion of mediocrity. Moderation was taken off the individual and outsourced to professionals.
One way to see the doge is as perfected hyperbole of expressing emotion. As McCulloch pointed out even the dissolved sentence structure serves as an expression of overwhelmedness. Of course continually exaggerating our display of feelings did spark a backlash on our emotional balance, but i'll leave the quantification and classification of this to people who are more versed in psychology and social studies than me.

Posting to remind myself.

First I want to apologise for my late reply.

I did *not* forget, I simply did not want to respond
unless I can come up with enough time to write a thoughtfull one.

And there my dilemma begins, tbh, because I don't know where to start.
As there's no question involved, I'm having a hard time figuring out a response.


So I'll just start with: The western world is ******. I don't know about the eastern world,
but I somehow strongly doubt that these people are being literally downgraded as well.

If this post sounds like a post from a conspiracy-theorist ...
... then I can tell you that I doubt most conspiracy-theorists can think deep enough into this ...
... because then they'd have to question their own conspiracies.

That doesn't mean there are no conspiracies.


So ...



Language honestly devolved over the last couple of decades.

I am restricted to german and english in my writing right now ...
... as these are the languages I know and am able to speak ...
... and thus the only ones I can actively observe.

And my english is very much bad, but that somehow hiding, I do.


Why is language important ?
Because it defines *how* we think and it defines *what* we think as well.


The amount of words you use, your vocabulary,
is directly related to the amount of depth you can put into a thought.
The amount of thoughts you can have. The amount of interconnections your
brain can create between different words, sentences, concepts, ideas.


If you remove a word, you remove a whole lot more than a word.
You remove an idea or a concept of something and every thought, idea or concept
that could have been created by or through that word.


If you, like Robert Anton Wilson or Aleister Crowley, trained yourself to
stop using the word "I", eventually you will perceive reality completely different.

You can read up on how they did that.
RAW bit himself every time he said it and Crowley did ... worse.


So what the **** has this to do with anything ?

Hell ... there's no question and I at some point early figured
out that asking questions or providing information for people to think about
is a much, much better approach than providing answers.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method


Such vobabulary.
Much wow.



Children in my shop take something into their hands ...
... look at their parent and say ...
... "Can I this?"

This is actually badly translated.

In german we say "Can I have this?" as "Kann ich das haben?"

Kann, Can
ich, I
das, this
haben, have

What I observe more and more is that children leave out the "have",
for at least one reason I am absolutely sure about. Of course many children
simply follow the lead and do what others show them.

Removing the "have" means they do not need to express their intent,
thus they do not have to fear rejection. One basically tricks himself.
I am sure of this, because I observed it on myself in the past.

"Have" in german, "haben", as in english implies ownership.
The child expresses the desire for ownership.
Means the parent has to buy it.
Thus the child is risking rejection.
Child avoids rejection by not fully committing to the thought.


Please note that feelings aren't emotions. I know people use it wrongly ...
... but feelings are what you feel inside and emotions are what you express outside.



Hold it.


The child fears rejection. As the child doesn't use the word "have" it tricks itself
into not having to suffer from possible rejection. What?

Every word has a meaning.
A meaning can be felt.
You can, literally, feel every word you read.

I'm sure at some point literally every single one of you who reads this realised
that every word can be actually felt in one way or another. Not necessarily like
usual feelings, but as impuls or feeling in the brain, for example.


People who made meditation a part of their life will probably understand me the most ...
... because they can observe things absolutely most people nowadays simply can not ...
... because their lives simply do not "allow" them to do so.

Because they are too busy. Their minds too distracted by work or fun.
There is no time for a conscious thought, because there's always something demanding attention.
Your brain constantly demands something to work on. There is no silence in your mind anymore.
Information overload.
Lack of concentration.
Automaticity.
Robotic, pattern based behaviour.
Loss of conscious thought ... but I derail myself here ........



Where am I going with this?


Ah yes. The emotional immaturity.


Be a kid.
You are born into a world in which people give you what you want, if you just cry hard enough.

TV tells you ...
... to "be yourself", "you are awesome", "this thing defines you as a person", "have an opinion!", "your voice is relevant", etc.

Your parents tell you how great and awesome you are.
They give you almost everything you want.
(which puts you into a reality people call "Materialism")

You are constantly being shielded from pain and suffering.



Now take everything I said and mix it.

Being shielded from feelings means you can not possibly learn how to deal with them.

You can not form ideas or concepts for them and you sure as hell don't talk about them,
because no one is talking about them. All the brave new world (read it? Huxley) cares about
is fun. They call it "Positivity". The whole emotional spectrum slowly gets reduced to whatever satisfies lower instincts.

If it's not "fun" it's not worth doing it. Games nowadays are made for you to enjoy them.
Not to suffer from losses, rejection or any negative feelings.


You can, btw, observe the emotional maturity of people if you read the forums.


Whenever you see someone cry about having lost something ...
... you observe emotional immaturity.

Because he never had to learn how to deal with it properly.
He never talked...

::Really excellent stuff here. I even discussed with my wife. After few rounds of working through the issue, we ended up with Juliet saying "Wassup?" Ver sad. Anyway, here's the TL:DR. Nah, TL:R: (Too Long; Read if you want)::

Really great stuff in this thread. Ila's OP presents three or four topics that could branch into an equal number of discussions. Solecist's posts too. Anyway, trying not to TL:DR and track just one, while not forgetting the rest.

As was said, language is a representation of thoughts, correct? Giving names to things, actions, and how things look or how they happen. And then there's syntax and grammar. They add in really fine refinements about thinking about when something was done, or will be done, or will have been done by the time something else happens. Etc. An incredibly sophisticated thing for our ancestors all over the world to have developed over time. They made a symbol for about any human thought or impression you might imagine, and invented ways for stringing the symbols together and modifying the sounds, to represent most conceivable situations, past, present or future. Without education or literacy. Apparently you don't need those to be have fundamental cleverness or awareness. Or just want to refine your thoughts and ability to explain a concept to a smart listener better.

So--- Now we're back to pre-syntax communication. Kind of like expressing things via poetry, where every single word can have multiple interpretations. Or like song lyrics. But who is composing poetry while texting? More like we're using 8 crayons to draw a stick figure, instead of the whole 64-crayon box. Jah forbid we get out the oil paints and really use all of the tools. Juliet goes to sleep thinking about Romeo's message, debating two possible interpretations of what he meant. Next day, she's wracked, and sends Romeo a short reply. She knew what she meant, and wanted him to understand, and was waiting for his reply. But he'd been waiting for hours, and didn't know that his vague no-syntax message wasn't understood. The tragedy here isn't poison and daggers, but unclear communication.

A haiku is a haiku, and gives 1,000 impressions and images. But do you want that when you want to convey your personal thoughts to somebody, and clearly as possible? TL:DR culture is 8 crayon culture-- best evaluate and beware. That's my belief, at least.

The ability to speak does not make intelligent.
It doesn't make self aware.

People nowadays have stopped speaking consciously for the most part.
Nowadays it's more pattern based behaviour than anything.
Yeah there's reasons for that, of course.
Manmade reasons, actually.
It's not "evolution".


People on the forums display that a lot and you can find it IRL easily.


The faster someone responds ....
... the less time he invested into processing what was said.

There's more around this, but this is the most essential thing to observe.


Instant reactions equal zero thought and robotic, pattern based behaviour.

[Quote above is an extract from Ila's post.] Wow. Yes indeed. True, a venue allowing thought-before-replying, instead of back and forth ping pong, really is another medium of communication. It's sort of like 19th century letter writers, putting down their thoughts and ideas on things. But instead, letter-writing with a whole worldwide crew. Some of whom will go with it and add to it, so it becomes a mighty discourse along the way.

[Came here ready to comment about Solecist's observation about languages' ways to express wants and needs and maturity levels, but that's for another day.... o7]