Me, Hell and The Universe: The 3 basic kinds of communication.

Why was I even alive at all?

      
        Most of the thinking that has been done about communication has been in the field of Information Technology, with the general approach being concerned with Claude Shannon's idea that: " The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point." This is, of course, a very reasonable approach as long as you are dealing with machines.
But another fundamental problem, and one that I would argue is infinitely more important at this time, is that human beings are, very clearly, not machines.
        So how does communication work in people?
       
        Communication always most basically works as: Information --------> Idea. (With Idea here being defined as: any information that follows from the first information.
        With machines, the information that follows will be the same as the information at first, as per Shannon's explanation. Or else you can programmme a system to allow certain incoming information to connect to a web of previous information.
       With humans however, the information that follows the first information can be transformed into something that was never originally programmed. In short, machines don't develop new ideas, but humans do.
      Moreover, the popular communication model of sender and receiver is actually contained within one single person, so that it is perfectly normal to communicate with oneself.

      In short; we can communicate with ourselves, with others, and, because communication most basically only requires information to idea, we are constantly communicating with the universe.

      1. Communication with oneself: Et In Arcardia Ego.
      
        Taking a look at the illustration above, we see a young boy* dreaming of a dying horse in the bed opposite to his own. His previous experiences: his dying grandmother, his best friend who is a horse, and his current perplexed view of his own life and situation; all of this information knits together to produce this dream.
        Anyone who has had a dream will surely agree that, within that situation of experiencing a dream, we are basically telling ourselves a story. And, we can experience it in such a way as to not know what is going to happen next. Clearly then, when dreaming we are both sender and receiver.
        Not only that, but this trick of being both sender and receiver is apparent in our waking state. We are able to ask ourselves questions as well as being able to provide descriptions and explanations to answer those questions. As we are also able to check our own ideas, we are, plainly, communicating with ourselves. Not only is there information to idea but we are using the 4 most basic skills of communication which are describing + explaining + asking + checking.
      Another natural consequence of our ability to both send and receive within ourselves is that we will have ideas popping into our heads unbidden. Sometimes as random thoughts that describe and explain, sometimes as questions. These thoughts and ideas manifest like sprites and freely walk through the walls of our mind from without.
      Human beings spend their entire existence with ghosts in their head. Our mind a haunted mansion.
      And people, quite naturally, are afraid of ghosts.
     Unfortunately, we are unable to call Bill Murray and friends, so the traditional way we deal with these ghosts is by attempting to blot out their droning and wailing, the clanking of the chains. Drugs and alcohol are the traditional remedies for the ghosts in our head. Spirits for spirits, Speed for our demons.
       But, much as in Sixth Sense, the most practical advice is to engage with our ghosts, because after all, communication is the only thing we ever do.
      
       Overall, we might compare the human experience with that of a dog who awakes one day to find a human brain within his head. After all, it is not clearly explained to us that we are to spend our entire lives with a head full of ghosts.**
      The dog, formerly full only of joy and excitement when his mistress feeds him, now finds new and disturbing ideas manifesting themselves as his new brain begins to collate new information: that's quite a cheap dog-food, maybe she doesn't love me after all!
      Once fully satisfied with food and drink, sex and ball-sport, the canine can now look at the sun and where once he saw a hot blob he now can see a god. This idea must, in turn, itself become information that feeds other ideas: What is god? What does he want me to do? Wait a minute, here's a dog in a daft hat, who claims to know what god wants. I'll listen to him, I mean, just look at that hat. Ah! this is all getting a bit much, I need wine not water, Christ, I can only relax with the ball...
        There has always been this tension within the human animal arising from our haunted mind, but we would do better to understand that the ghosts we share our living space with are aspects of ourselves.
        It's not a good idea to be scared of yourself. 

        On a modern and more trivial note, the irritation that is commonly felt by having to listen to someone having a conversation on a mobile phone with an unseen, and more importantly, unheard interlocutor can be explained as our brain's most natural and fundamental desire- to step from information to idea -being constantly thwarted.
       Whereas, our brain receives a great deal of reward from the information and ideas of other people. Although, it is clear, it doesn't always go well.
      

 

Our education. Largely decided by others. No questions asked.

               2. Communication with others:  God grant you find one face there, you loved when all was young.

        In his play Huis Clos/ Dead End, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had one of his characters pronounce: Hell is other people ( Lenfer, c'est les autres.)  As Sartre himself explained, this wasn't meant as a fire and brimstone condemnation of the futility of human relationships, but rather was intended to explore the idea that our relationships with others lead us continually back to the idea of ourself. And that it is possible to act in ways that improve our relationships with others.
        If we are at all interested in our interactions with our fellow human beings, we stand a much better chance of more successful interaction if we acknowledge how communication works.
       Specifically, as communication = Information --------> Idea, it is vital to understand that any information can have any number of ideas connected to it.  Thus it is that if we take some seemingly simple information such as: Japan, we might casually assume that it is connected to the idea of a country. It is, of course, but we can also connect it to any number of other things:
                                          Japan -------------> An island
                                                   -------------> A football team
                                                   -------------> A culture
                                                   -------------> A government
                                                   -------------> The home of sushi
                                                   -------------> The home of Samurai
                                                   -------------> David Sylvian's gang
                                                   -------------> Pearl Harbour
                                                   -------------> Hello Kitty
                                                   -------------> 被爆者
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　-------------> Oscar Goldman
                                                                          etc etc etc

       Any idea from any information will only be "correct" within a specific context as all information depends on context. Consequently, the goal of better communication becomes an effort to find and understand better ideas.
     How do we understand what constitutes a better idea? Simply put, it can only be that which provides a better description or explanation of how things work.
      For example, for the vast majority of human history the main and strongest idea connected to the information of our environment (animals, humans, the world, the heavens, day, night, plants, water, sex, food) has constantly been: God or gods. Considering the circumstances that our ancestors had to battle through in order to survive, that they came up with any kind of explanation at all is a triumph of the basic human skill of communication.
      An explanation of God or gods, however, offers little in the way of helping us to understand how things work. It is not mere coincidence that priests offer the explanation of: God works in mysterious ways.
     Generally then, the gods bring men more questions than answers. But it is only by using questions, our gift from the gods, that we can put information together in novel ways to form new ideas.
      With more information comes more idea. So when the historical tide of increasing communication carried Darwin's Beagle around the world, the new idea that returned on the crest of all this new information would provide a better explanation of how a fair part of the world worked.
     And so, instead of wasting time with the futility of debating whether basic evolutionary theory or God are  the "truth" it would be a much more simple and useful matter to consider which offers the better explanation.***
     This way, we must necessarily be more interested not only in those ideas of others, but even more importantly, more interested in those ideas of our own.

                                     All  we see of stars are their old photographs.


        3. Communication with the universe: Apprehend God.


        In his short story, The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke spins a tale of a couple of western computer programmers who are hired by Tibetan Monks to calculate all the possible permutations of the names of God according to a sacred alphabet. This task is, according to the Monks, the most basic function of the universe and to carry it out is to do God's will.
       God's will, of course, has been a matter of intense speculation for what is almost certainly the near entirety of human history, and any number of interesting ideas have been put forth on the matter. It seems as though there is a basic human need for a spirituality that encourages belief in an other whom we refer to as god.
      This desire to orient ourselves within the universe is one major aspect of our constant communication with the universe. It is the universe we question, the universe we appeal to, the universe that lets us down.
      Surrounded as we are by all the information of the universe we can do nothing else but respond with ideas. For a long time, our explanation of the universe was simply God, or gods. More recently, we have come up with better explanations for how things work. Science can be seen as our ongoing conversation with the universe.
      If we leave God in the vestry for the moment, the majority of our interactions with the universe are in and among the classical elements of air water earth and fire.###$ Those things that were formerly considered to be the basic building blocks of existence.
     The information of oxygen gives the information of energy. A similar process occurs with food, drink and warmth. Everyday miracles of ordinary transubstantiation that often pass without comment or reverence or worship.
      The plants that provide our oxygen and food take the body of the sun and the blood of water which, combined with the ministrations of the holy photosynthetic ghost, produce the nativity. With carbohydrates the son of the universe.
      The world turns as information combines with other information to form new information. And it will continue like that until the Fimbulwinter.
     
                      Sunflower to God turns, asks," What?"
                      God beams and offers,"Let there be light."
                      Prana becomes the body of Christ,
                      Communion inevitable, unavoidable, unstoppable.
                      


      For not only is communication the only thing we ever do, it is also the only thing that ever happens.
      Why then, would we not want to improve communication? Why would we want to ignore all the evidence of history and avoid to improve communication, which is tied to any improvement in society, and attempt to maintain the status quo? ++++
      
       All around, without any fuss the stars, all of them, began shining brighter.
     
                                                 ---------------
      * Jimmy Corrigan's Granddad.

   ** My life in the Bush of Ghosts-
    

 
  *** It would, of course, be most illuminating and interesting to hear an explanation of why God provides a better explanation for natural history than does evolution.
   ++++ Which is great if you are in power. Another idea, however, is that maintaining the status quo is Status Quo's job. #

   ## Which, in itself, suggests rather fantastically## that Status Quo are agents of darkness,   doing the Devil's work.

   ### Or entirely appropriately depending on your point of view.

   #### That's not quite Earth Wind and Fire. But possibly even more groovy-



    $ Throw in ball-sport, and our dog-heart becomes apparent.

we all r star