Lost in Translation

I heard an infant wail when her father got up to get something from his bag a few seats away from me on the train. For whatever reason, it triggered a flash of understanding about why even adult human beings search outside of themselves for meaning. An infant is more acutely dependent on the help of others, notably parents, especially the mother, but even the father, whoever is providing warmth, protection, familiarity. An infant is attuned to helplessness, knows it without thinking, strictly through feeling. But as the infant becomes toddler and then young child, something happens—thought, increasing complexity of thought—that results in a separation from feelings, feelings that arise through sensation, through interaction with what is external to the body, the environment, the immediately surrounding environment.

It works in all ways, from the inhalation and exhalation of the air, of oxygen, to the swallowing and urinating or sweating of water and other fluids, the intake of nutrients through food and the excretion of the waste, the warmth or cold of the surrounding air or water or clothing or other bodies and the internal regulation of that heat or cold to maintain a relatively constant temperature, and so on and so forth. In no way, shape, or form are human beings individuals in the supposedly enlightened, Western sense of the word. That is a deception created and internalized through the complexity of thought and the structural complexity of that thought is what masks the utter dependence of particular human beings from reality, the reality of the relationship between the internal and the external. Self and/or identity is thus a lie that was in error from the first simple conception, perhaps itself a flash that someone, some philosopher or thinker, had centuries or millennia in the past.

But that error has been passed from generation to generation, codified in law, spread like a thought virus that took the form of language, spoken and written. The claims that each human is not an individual but a co-dependent being is a blasphemy in countries like the United States and, increasingly, in all other countries. Individuality is the basis of a secular religion or cult, just as fervently superstitious and irrational as any beliefs that defy the preponderance of evidence.

It may be an irony that the uneducated, illiterate, and poor know this truth better than those with PhDs from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and other elite universities around the world. But it’s obvious enough to anyone more in touch with sensation and feeling than with complex intellectual ideas. I had just finished reading Somerset Maugham’s The Colonel’s Lady and I was reflecting on the story when the man rose from his seat and the infant began crying. Perhaps that is why I had that intense flash of insight, more an intuitive knowing that rose to thought because of how I processed the sounds I heard and the feelings I felt at almost the same moment. The thought, in its complexity, began its process and, as I’ve been writing this, I’ve distanced myself from my sensation in order to translate that sensory information and those feelings into thoughts that give rise to these words.

Thoughts are no less biological than the sensations and emotions. It is only when the thoughts are confined within a particular structure, the structure of language, that significant and complex errors of translation and interpretation begin to arise. I have thought in the past that language is a form of self-deception, or at least tends to be, but that is because the structure of language itself is in error and to think within the structure of any particular language determines the interpretive lens through which thoughts arise. In that sense, an infant is less confused than an adult. So, too, are animals. That doesn’t mean that infants have greater power, though. However, infants, with their lack of language processing abilities, cannot be fooled into believing the soothing, appeasing lies of language, the types of lies that dismiss the warning signs that sensation and emotion regularly communicate to the brain.

To maintain a “stiff upper lip” as the British culture might promote or to “tough it out” as the American culture demands is really a way of thinking that dismisses the suffering of the body that is communicated through sensation and feeling. Thus, the cultural basis of the English-speaking world, at the least, dismisses nature for the sake of a fantasy that leads to ill-health and diminishing well-being.

I witnessed, while living in Amsterdam, the beginnings of a new way of thinking, one based on scientific research, especially the more recent research from neuroscience that corresponds with Eastern modes of thought, the wisdom and traditions of yoga, tai chi, and other ancient holistic body/mind arts. Instead of churches on every corner I found studios offering yoga and martial arts classes. The old center of the city, especially, is still geared for cycling and walking above all else. Cars and even trams are not the most common forms of transportation. The quality of the food on offer many places is increasingly of a higher order than in the past.

The bottom line is that the health and well-being of the body is increasing in centrality of importance in the most advanced civilizations. It is institutionally understood first and foremost, from stringent environmental regulations to subsidization of transportation, health care, food safety, and so on. There is thus a trickling down of importance to the citizens of Amsterdam (and of course to the rest of Holland, but of the rest of the Netherlands I experienced much less).

A great hope for the world grew within me while living in Amsterdam, a hope I hadn’t had previously due to living in the U.S., spending my years of puberty and adolescence in the shadow of the militarization of the country during the Reagan Revolution and the advance of hyper-production/consumption cycles accelerated through economic globalization under all subsequent presidential administrations, enabled and encouraged by Congress and the Supreme Court. I have been in the U.S., though, since October of 2008. Obama’s “audacity of hope” proves to be just another in an endless series of political lies fostered by both Democrats and Republicans, a whitewashing of true intentions through soaring rhetoric. Obama, an inspiring orator with a pedestrian vision, is just another snake oil salesman descended from Western schools of thought, nothing more than high-brow con artistry.

No one should be surprised, though. Skin color, gender, sexual identity? All inconsequential traits in a country, in a world, where modes of thought determine decision making and action. If there still persists a belief that an African-American or a woman will be less likely to start or continue ceaseless war and class-based economics then it has to be recognized that Western thought is impervious to evidence. Western thought, the supposed champion of empiricism and rationality, of reason and the scientific method. Only a fool could still believe that, a fool who believes that abstract thought tells greater truths than sensation and emotion.

It can be said, perhaps, that the defeat of nature is complete. Well, in the minds of Western men and women, anyway. If perception is believed to be reality then sensation and feeling will be forever overmatched. But that’s only true for those who have been matriculated through school training, really just forced brainwashing of children and young adults. Parents are complicit, of course, because they were brainwashed as well, historical thought viruses spread to generation after generation, through institutional mechanisms that pervade even the most informal cultures. One has to look for truth amongst the poor, the outlaws, and the misfits. The subjugated understand the truth in their bodies; they simply lack the resources to resist institutional power and they certainly understand that the pain increases in relation to the intensity of resistance.