Sunday, October 04, 2009

If our understanding is organized in layers, then:

- whenever there are too many layers for us to build, the presented concept would appear too cumbersome;

- if there is nothing new to add to our internal webwork or ideas, we label the text as boring and/or trivial;

- “nice reading” is when we can use whatever is at our disposal to get the meaning and to add one or two new festoons to our own mind’s garments without much effort;

- and “fascinating” or “encouraging” is when the concepts presented, even if we can’t get them immediately, lure us into building yet another layer of meanings for ourselves, just in order to be able to finally decrypt the message which those strangely beautiful reverberances of somebody else’s mind seem to be holding within.

1 comment:

Ron de Weijze said...

Suppose language, as a conceptual layer, is built upon a deeper layer of neurons, which in its turn is built on one of programming templates. Now we are (e)reading some world literature, say Anna Karenina, and experience these conceptual layers starting their interplay. What is hard-wired human or even animal instinct, is sublimated by the neuronal layer into beautified and civilized scenes we can all relate to immediately by perceptual memory and personal experience. We don't want more layers, as if there could be any more, or less, as if that could produce the same affect and inner happiness. Now that I translated my received view into yours, I can see your are on the right track (though I hardly have faith in neuro-linguistic programs). To me, it is Bergson and his contemporaries (Freud, Jung, Darwin). The fringe or festoon of instinct is intuition, and intuition is misinterpreted by bad socialism into intelligence. So we can and should keep and enjoy almost all of it, yet work on cleansing what we tell each other is intellect or intelligence.