Harmonizing Consciousness - How the Acquired Faculty of Language Wreaks Havoc on Human Consciousness, a

Chapter 2

The Double Bind of Human Mind

What Havoc is Wreaked Upon Us?

Have you ever taken a walk and arrived at your destination, only to realize you were unaware of the entire journey because you were engrossed in your thoughts?

Have you ever felt torn between what you feel is right and what your thoughts tell you to do?

Have you ever lost sleep because you were worrying or upset?

Have you ever felt anxious and been unable to find words to describe the cause?

Do self-deprecating or negative thoughts sometimes randomly arise in your mind?

Have you ever felt like there was something wrong with you?

Have you ever wished you were happier?

The experiences alluded to in these questions are specific to animals who have acquired the faculty of language.

Are We the Most Intelligent Animal?

We know that wild animals live in a whole-bodied way and use their senses to find food and safety. We know that modern humans live with a degree of comfort and safety that wild animals are unfamiliar with. This result became possible to us because our highly organized societies are dependent on the exchange of coded information across distance and time.1 This is a sign of intelligence but does not mean human intelligence has increased as a result. Humans measure their capacities to use language and mathematics and have mistakenly identified high competencies of this kind, as intelligence. The most recent science tells us that humans are not more intelligent than other animals, we just have different kinds of intelligence.2 Primatologist Frans De Waal has documented how many kinds of animals demonstrate the ability to reason and think. It is becoming increasingly clear that something other than a higher form of intelligence separates humans from animals.3

Both Buddhist teachings and modern psychology tell us that identifying with concepts—not the real things themselves—is the cause of suffering. It’s the ideas or stories about events that make us most upset. But why are the cells and body processes of humans so strongly invested into purposeful mental frolicking, unlike other animals? (I use the term mental frolicking to refer to our compulsion for making up stories or rationalizing; engaging with literature or intellectual pursuits of all kinds; all forms of art and entertainment; use of computer and smart phones etc.)

In looking at the problem of human consciousness, I come to it with unique inherited potentials, environment and experience which include an intensive period of personal transformation, extensive meditation study and practice, working as a clinical hypnotherapist and then my own study of human evolution, information systems and systems theory. As a result, my brain mapping processes provided an insight from the unique set of data they have gathered so far.

The idea that came to me is that acquiring the faculty of human language creates an altered context for human living—a double bind. The double bind of human mind is that we must use unreliable and possibly misleading language to participate in human society even though the very act dissociates our cells and body processes from our protective biological, sensing, feedback systems. Feelings of anxiety, depression and hopelessness at a cellular level are the natural consequence of this conflict. Even though it works effortlessly for us—after years of training—and even though it is infinitely helpful for navigating human society, language has significant drawbacks. It is important that we learn more about these. Certainly we would benefit by stepping back and examining language from a different perspective; one with deeper scrutiny and less infatuation for the idea that its use makes us intelligent.

Language: Is It A Big Deal or Not?

Language doesn’t sound like much. We could say that it includes the activities of conversing, reading, writing, thinking or reasoning and everything that involves those tasks. Pshaw, that’s nothing! Let me explain why I insisted on using the cumbersome terminology ‘acquiring the faculty of language’ instead of ‘language’ in the subtitle of this book. The term highlights an idea that is integral to it. Language is a tool that we must labour to learn, it is not inherent to our physical makeup. We are not born speaking or writing words. It took each of us years of schooling and practice to master it.

A faculty can be defined as an aptitude, capability, capacity or talent for doing something. Every literate human being works hard to acquire this talent for creating, understanding and sharing code. Once we have acquired this capacity, it feels as natural to us as breathing. More accurately speaking, once our cells and body processes have been properly trained and neurological circuitry has been laid down in our biological and physical structures, using language feels effortless to us. We call effortless behaviours habits. Some habits take longer to acquire than others, that’s all. Because they become wired in our circuitry in this way, they can be challenging to change. But they can be changed.

Stuck in Our Heads with a Faulty Faculty

The training for humans to acquire their sophisticated coding system begins at birth. Animals also share common ways of communicating with each other and even other species, but their communication is directly embodied by their senses, cells and body processes. Animals don’t need to make special effort to learn their way because it arises naturally from their genetic heritage, their species and how they live. A purr expresses a certain state of a cat and this purr is a reliable sign of that state. For instance, if a cat is angry at you, it will not pretend it is not angry and it will certainly not purr at you. Animals offer us a level of uncomplicated acceptance and genuine, reliable behaviour that humans find comforting. It’s no wonder that our pets have become so important to us.

The Wikipedia article entitled “Origin of Language” is illuminating. The section near the beginning called “Problems of reliability and deception” reports that the main problem with language is that it is a system of symbols, and symbols are “unreliable and may well be false”. Hmm. I don’t recall hearing this from my teachers or my parents, or anyone else for that matter. I had to learn it the hard way. I would say this is a significant feature of our culture and we should look more deeply into what this means for us as a species. (I highly recommend reading that particular entry in Wikipedia.)

All children of modern, developed societies are indoctrinated into the fold of our contrived and complex language code. The education process is inconsistent and unreliable because of the many variables involved. On top of that, each human being has a different genetic base, upbringing, life experience, training, and therefore, a different interpretation of everything and different proclivities.

This situation is not anyone’s fault. It is a limitation of the system that evolved. The huge investment that humans have made over thousands of years into coding is remarkable and the products of our ancestors’ investments are astounding. The benefits of this tool have allowed our species to outcompete all others on our planet.

The adaptations that evolved to accommodate the tool of language likely occurred over millions of years—at the same time that our cortexes grew to their large size. More room for data storage allowed us to do more things, as we know from using our computers today.

One serious problem we face is that our easy access to information perpetuates an increasing volume of it and this provides too much information for biological organisms to sort through for accuracy and relevance. How are we to find what is best for us? Is Google our new brain? Certainly it appears we have painted ourselves into rooms where we rely on a small group highly trained people in each field to become our information specialists who will relay accurate and relevant information to us when we need it. But how can we be sure this is happening in an accurate way that is good for us? Who will pay for this service? Who can we trust? It seems inevitable that our species will learn how to use information—language—quite differently in the future.

Acquiring the faculty of language has set us apart from other animals in a particularly interesting way; by using it we remain bound to perpetuating it. Since this ensures we will continue to expand our ability to work with abstractions or mental symbols, we will want to be sure we understand how this affects us.

Language is not a living thing—but we are. Some people have said that language is a living process but that is a misleading statement; language evolves and changes, but language is just a tool like a hammer is a tool. Hammers have changed in design and material over the years too because humans have adapted them. This alludes to a powerful discovery which has been known for thousands of years and has recently been proven by science. Human attention alters its object of focus. Using an example which is relevant to this book, humans can change their own process of consciousness merely by putting their...