Category Archives: The Evolution of Talk

The “evolution of talk” covers the evolution of the human capacity for language as well as the modes in which that capacity is expressed. Aspects are discussed in chapters 1,2 and 7 of An Archaeology of the Fall.

02/21/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 W

Summary of text [comment] page 80

[Our current Lebenswelt exhibits a wide variety of symbolic orders.

We might distinguish them as ‘specialized languages that make sense of the world’ (sensible construction) in contrast to ‘specialized languages that inspire us to social construction’. This dichotomy matches the distinction between naturalism and theism.

This is a false dichotomy.

Why?

The ‘languages that make sense of the world’ are no longer obviously referential.

Why?

Just try to image a thing using purely spoken words.

Try to point to a thing with spoken words.

Tell me how your spoken words index your body.

Compare spoken words to pantomime and manual-brachial gestures. Hand-talk words were iconic and indexal. They were intuitively referential. That is not the case for spoken words. Even the most familiar speech-alone words do not intuitively image or point to their referent. Instead, reference is projected into word-sounds.

In our current Lebenswelt, meaning, presence and message are projected into our speech-alone words.]

02/20/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 V

[In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, our ancestors exhibited constrained complexity.

So, what can we (humans) conclude about our evolved nature:

We innately expect words to be referential, facilitating seeking pleasure, avoiding pain and safely ignoring the rest.

We innately hold a self-centerness and a selfishness that expects to be contradicted by a (nonsensical) tradition within constrained complexity.

We innately expect sensible construction to be contradicted by social construction.

Social construction builds networks of cooperation based on objects that are ‘references constructed on references’.

We innately expect to conduct sensible construction on the basis of a reference, that cannot be fully talked about, generated by social construction.]

02/17/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 U

[In social construction, we expect images, pointings and presences that defy immediate gratification.  They do so by ‘not making sense’, thereby forcing the participants to construct meanings that are not the plain meanings of the words.

By acting as if the new references were Real, our ancestors (and we ourselves today) opened spaces for cognitive and cultural adaptations outside of ‘what we would expect from pursuing immediate gratification’ and ‘what we would expect from sensible construction’.

Our ancestors gained an adaptive advantage from ‘not making sense’. Social construction facilitated exploration of advanced social cooperation. This proved crucial in the milieu of intergroup competition.

We construct ourselves as distinctly human social beings through this second symbolic order.]

02/16/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 T

Summary of text [comment] page 80

[The second symbolic order, the one that did not make intuitive sense, evolved because the symbolic processing of grammar offered the opportunity.

The symbolic operations of grammar increased the efficacy of word-gestures. Yet, it also allowed nonsensical utterances. These forced the reader (remember that this is hand talk, working with the expectation of reference) to construct ‘a reference based on the nonsensical utterance’.

The secondary symbolic order facilitated the evolution of the mental synthesis that we now regard as ‘the religious mentality’. Here is a mentality that explores advantages outside the frame of sensible construction.

I call this secondary symbolic order ‘social construction’.]

09/2/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 BL

[Schoonenberg did not explicitly engage the specter of modern nothingness.

Does anybody?

I suspect that the Shiites (the Party of Ali) do. Iranian mystics look at modern Western Progressives and see their Secular Society as less than nothing.

Western Progressive Society is ‘a nothing so negative’ that it appears ‘a positive something’.

Secular Society resembles branches growing without the tree. There are no roots. There is no trunk. There are only branches.

This is the ‘nothing’ that we have created without God.]

09/1/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 BK

[Similarly, the vast nothingness that we see in contemporary American television is supported by the dynamics of ‘I recognize myself according to some … nothingness’.

This ‘nothingness’ consists of characters, such as ‘a helpless victim terrorized by a bad one’. The televised helpless victim inspires sympathy, because the viewer is also a victim (a disempowered person who cannot talk back to the television producers).]

08/25/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2 BF-2

[The cultural veiling of key theological words in the constantly tumultuous symbolic orders of the civilized West has been going on for a long time.

The 12th century is 900 years ago. Clearly, some people were already trying to liberate the concept of human freedom from the trappings of Original Sin.

Augustine and the Council of Carthage occurred 1800 years ago. Already, some were trying to liberate love from grace.]

07/5/16

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.2AF

[The televisionaires speak their truth to you, little viewers with golden ornaments.

You cannot talk back, so the television will speak for you. Mainstream TV will portray a character, a victim, some poor trifle that stands for you, the true victim, who cannot talk back to the television. You will feel sympathy for this pathetic creature because you identify with the victim.

You are the victim of the televisionaries, but you do not know it. You only see what is in front of you. You only see images on a screen.

I will consider ‘the so-called truths that they broadcast’, which Christ called a lie, in the next blog.]