Mankind’s most remarkable tool is language. The ability of the spoken word to form mental constructs in the minds of others. The written word, this here, the words that you are reading are a symbolic abstraction of speech. This abstraction gives permanence.
At a very low level you are sequentially processing these symbols, the ones that I have created in an environment unique to me. You are decoding information and building a construct in your head. At a higher level, you are forming an impression, whether or not you like what you are reading. Based on this information, you can make decisions. Are you going to continue reading?
In two short paragraphs we have created a connection. Regardless of our temporal and spatial separation, we two, you and me have an intimate connection.
Through this connection, I can manipulate your consciousness. Think about where you are right now – the environment you are in, the clothes that you are wearing, where you sleep at night, who you love. Your environment, like mine, is the sum of every conscious decision that you have ever made.
The decision you made to keep reading has now altered your internal environment.
Reading, like speaking is a sequential process – the words themselves have meaning, but also the order of the words. These same words in a different sequence would have a different meaning, or no meaning at all. Time, and the passage of time, is an integral part of our consciousness, and it is that consciousness right now – yours, that is not only temporarily parsing these words, but is also aware that you are doing this. You are aware that you are looking at words, moving from one to the next, identifying them according you your understanding of such terms as abstraction and permanence.
You are processing simultaneously now, constructing meaning from these symbols using low level structures in your brain. At the same time you are aware of the actual act of reading – your eyes moving from word to word, sentence to sentence. Additionally you are aware of the place that you are in, your connection to that place and all the things that inhabit it and their relationship to your internal environment.
With no prior knowledge of your circumstances, you are now thinking of the things in your life, the meaning of these things and your connection to them, and now I'm a part of that.
Approximately 400 discrete symbols have bought you to this point.
Remarkable.
Peter Yarrow 2009
