Cleopatra, a cowboy, then screaming!. - How we understand things.

“We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.”   

             “Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the Dark. ”

― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra





  Cleopatra, a cowboy, then....screaming!
      Presented with this information, how does the brain deal with it? Necessarily, the brain must deal with it as it does with all information:

                                Information -------------> Idea

       Consequently, you might sort it out like this:

                       Cleopatra   --------------> Queen Of Egypt
                       A cowboy   --------------> Tom Mix

                      Screaming! --------------> Expressing a strong emotional state

        And then, in an example of the fundamentally creative aspect of basic communication, our brains start to fill in the blanks, to describe and explain the connections between things:
                       Cleopatra is showing her asp to Tom Mix.
       Or:           Mark Antony has run through Tom Mix with his sword!
       Or:           Cleopatra and Tom Mix are enjoying some how's your father.

       And that is basically how we understand things. We understand things by understanding connections between things. Our brains make connections automatically, so if we make efforts to ask and check, we naturally stand a greater chance of understanding things better.

                And so:

                       Cleopatra --------------> Queen of Egypt?
                       A Cowboy --------------> Tom Mix?
                       Screaming! -------------> What kind of screaming?

                 And to answer:
                    
                     Cleopatra ---------------> A movie title
                     A Cowboy  ---------------> A movie title                                                                          Screaming! ----------> A movie title

                  If you are British, forties or older, and the kind of person who can recite F.A. cup winners, or who knows where you can find Tom Mix standing next to Oscar Wilde, then you probably stand a better chance of recognising that the connection between these movie titles is that much-loved British institution: The Carry On films.


 

Something's afoot, in Carry on Screaming!

           
                Very simply, if we can not connect idea(s) to information, it means that we don't understand the information ( but your brain will plug it in somewhere anyway...)
             For example, presented with the information of a dog it is easy enough for most people to go to the idea of an animal. The information of a small dog will probably lead to the idea of a chihuahua etc.
             It is when we encounter information such as a gold dog that our connected ideas can become shaky and unsure. Is it a golden retriever ? Is it a statue ? What kind of dog is it?
             However, as can be clearly seen from our example, when we are unsure of the idea, we start to ask and check. In fact, it is fair to say that the only way we can better understand anything that is a little difficult for us is by asking and checking.
              When we ask and check, we are looking for information that helps us to fill in the gap(s) between Information and Idea. Our bicameral brains are so good at filling these gaps automatically, that, in a very real and practical way, we may think we understand something when we have completely the wrong idea. If our sense of correctness is bolstered by other information such as: the approval of others, prevailing cultural ideas, and being the products of cultures where communication must be, to some degree, inhibited to protect the current system, then we may start to think that, say, A President Bottom Burp, or A Prime Minister Knob are great ideas.
                   Here is an example of what ordinarily happens:

                 Information ---------------------------------> Idea


                Boris Johnson ------------------------------> Acceptable leader


   So, how does this step happen?
               Any and all information is always dependent on context. The context of any and all information is, generally, all other information within the universe, but it is specifically our own context, the way we as an individual connect to the universe, that has the strongest effect on our own ideas. So our ideas are brought up from the well of our own experience, washed in the water of our previous ideas. (Or possibly, caked in the sludge that collects at the bottom of wells that are dry.)
              How, erm, well...our own personal well of thought is connected to ground water, open to rain, or even if it is has been made accessible for strangers to tip buckets of liquid of  unknown provenance into, is due to both our own efforts, and that matrix of ideas that we are all inside and is known as culture.
          

When Sheriff Earp hears the word culture...

           We all grow up surrounded and saturated by ideas. The strongest are embedded within ourselves, those instincts that we are born with. After that, we are provided with ready-cooked ideas from family, friends, country and local and international culture. The human brain being so good at processing the information of these ideas, that we can happily be a fully functioning repository of other peoples' ideas without pausing to consider if that is what we might actually want. Without doubt, there are many systems of culture, and especially education, that serve to inhibit those natural abilities that allow us to understand things beyond dog-level.  Why else would there be a bizarre glorification of children being able to spell words they will almost never use, hear, or read, while so little effort is expended on encouraging them to practice asking and checking?
          
           It would make sense, especially at this point in human history when there is access to information like never before, to acknowledge that we should no longer try to inhibit our most natural abilities but rather encourage them. Especially as our context is now changing dazzlingly, dizzily fast, yet our governments and institutions are insistent and largely dependent on preparing people for contexts which have disappeared, or bear no resemblance to what went before.
          A determination to step into the past has marked recent political developments. And to secure that about-turn, the old ideas of Empire and Exceptionalism, those ideas from the 19th and 20th centuries, are printed, bound and distributed to the frightened.
           However, we are in most need of new ideas, just as we always were, rather than the old ideas we seem to be increasingly clutching at like a baby chimp with a comfort blanket.

Us; increasingly so recently.

           And just for good measure, the story of the neglected little soul in the photograph re-emphasises the more obvious general point: that it is only by connections that we can develop and flourish....everybody instinctively knows this, and people will generally only give up human companionship for sitting up a mountain with the promise of becoming best mates with God...so why are we doing this to ourselves? Why are we choosing to neglect ourselves and each other and deliberately sitting in our respective cardboard boxes, clutching our cloth gods, keeping ourselves warm with fantasies of Albion, Abraham and Asgard, afraid of the future knocking at the door, refusing to engage with it, and so causing this inevitable visitor to creep in when we are least prepared, as we, now terrified, think it no longer a necessary traveling companion but an enemy to be held down, choked, and murdered with excuses?
            

          Why? Because the culture demands it. A bloated rotting ghoul, stumbling with running sores, it shambles from one old haunt to the next, desperate to avoid the natural light if it is to continue to survive in its darkness; twitching and fearful of the dawn, it cowers in the sewers with its children.
           Carry on screaming.
                                       
                                               

          
          
         
            
                                     

Michael Jackson isn't dead. - How we make a sentence

        "Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious"
                                                                                         Thomas Aquinas








       Michael Jackson's mortal remains are reportedly buried in an unmarked grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood. Probably. Because there were other reports that he had been cremated.
       Perhaps surprisingly and certainly disappointingly, there were no reports that he had worked his way out of his tomb to perform formation dancing along with other residents of the cemetery.
       Otherwise, and somewhat inevitably, there are people who insist that Mr Jackson isn't dead at all.

       In fact, I do not wish to argue over the final resting place of one famous person's bones, nor do I intend to offer evidence to prove that the singing star faked his own death and now lives out his days happily under an alias. What I would actually like to do is to exhume the skeletal remains of  S. Entence Esq. and reexamine those remains.
       From that reexamination I will offer a different take on what constitutes the basic skeleton of a sentence, and attempt to explain how the way sentences are formed allows human beings a level of communication that our fellow animals don't possess and that, because of this special ability, we can both conjure Michael Jackson back from the grave even while he remains firmly in it.
       Also, with the Zombie King of Pop being both alive and dead at the same time, it is only fair to refer to this situation as Schrodinger's Michael Jackson.*

       The bare bones of a sentence have long been considered to rest in the form of  those things  known as subject and predicate; which is certainly one way to look at it. Another way to look at sentences is expressed in by the idea that a sentence contains: "a complete thought" as explained on the Common Knowledge** website here.
      But there are other ways to look at the innards of this particular linguistic body, and the one I'm attempting to explain concerns the question: "How do children know how to make sentences when there is no explicit training?" 
        What I would like to suggest here, is that no native speaker forms a sentence through basic consideration of the subject and predicate. What people actually do is start with information and then move to idea. This is the most basic step of making a sentence and is the most basic step of all communication. This is the most basic way our brains work.
         For example, let's say a speaker starts with the information of Michael Jackson. Presuming that we don't need to pause to ask or check who Michael Jackson is, our brains will move to connected ideas. In this context the ideas could include: a singer, a dancer, Peter Pan, children, nut-case etc.
        In this example we are going to use,  the basic idea is: dead.
         So now, there is the information of: Michael Jackson.

         And then we can move onto the idea, and the idea in this case is: dead.

                              Information    ---------------------------->   Idea

                            Michael Jackson --------------------------> Dead

       Now, what a sentence basically allows us to do is describe or explain the relationship or connection between the Information and the  Idea. This is what all sentences are basically doing.

      The most basic connections of information and idea are like this:

                                 Information    ---------------------------->   Idea

                                (something)                   is                          (something)
                        
                                        "                           isn' t                        "

                                        "                           has                           "

                                        "                        doesn't have                 "

                                        "                         is like                         "

                                        "                        is, for example            "

                                        "                            is                            (somewhere)

                                        "                            isn't                         (somewhere)

                                        "                            is                             (sometime)



      The important point is that sentences express the relationship between the information and the idea. Naturally then, the process of making a sentence is as follows:

                                    1. Information
                                    2. Idea
                                    3. Describing and explaining of the relationship between 1. and 2.


        For example:

                          1.                             3.                                 2.

                        this                           is                                good

                        this                           isn't                            food

                        this                           has                             noise

                       this                             is                               a person.

                       this                            isn't                            a person.



            Now, this way of explaining how people most basically construct a sentence is very far from being standard in Tesol or education in general. We might ask why that would be, and the very simple and obvious reason is that: people don't know how they do it. Which obviously makes it difficult to teach. After all, in standard teaching practice throughout history, the teacher explains how something is done, and then the student attempts to do it by themselves. So if you don't know how you do it yourself, then you can only show how you do it in a superficial way and thus an important basic step is missing.
             Another reason why teaching how people make a sentence is not standard is because there is no recognition of its necessity. Making a sentence is such a basic human skill, possessed by all, that there has long been the quite normal tacit idea that it is no more necessary to teach people how to make a sentence than it is to teach people how to walk.
              But what if you suddenly found yourself transformed into a centaur, and had to cope with horses legs, something you had never done before? Would it not be helpful to understand the most basic way that horses legs operate? And isn't this a reasonable analogy of one of the most basic difficulties of second language learning?
            If you don't agree, I checked with this guy who had been afflicted by a witch's curse. He said my analogy stands up. (Unlike him when it first happened.)

At The Renaissance Fair. Clearly, there were more centaurs during the Renaissance than you might think.

    When the announcement of Michael Jackson's demise first occurred, my own ideas were sent tumbling over one another in the context of trying to process the information that the world's strangest most famous person was gone. It was as though the headline had flashed up: The Loch Ness Monster is Dead. We were being told that a mythical creature had left the material world. Little wonder that some of those who had heavily invested in the idea of Jackson's life being lived in lock-step with their own would refuse to believe it:




               Info    ----------------------------------->      Idea

        Michael Jackson              isn't                         dead

            Denying reality is something that human beings are very good at. Our power to thumb our nose at the unwavering opinions of the universe stems largely from our ability with language. Specifically, our ability to create sentences that can shoulder the weight of massive lies.
         As sentences provide the basic skeletons for all the chimerical wonders we produce, it is interesting that so little thought is given to considering how they most basically work. Also, the idea that people (especially those who consider themselves "educated") get from the information that the most basic way that sentences are formed is a subject largely ignored is often: How dare you suggest this? A reaction so emotional because the idea that we don't actually have a very good idea about how we speak is tied to notions of self-identity and pride.
         In this day and age, the modern flint-axe of Google might be employed to cut open the belly of the internet to see what the entrails have to say on this emotive subject.
        Asking: "How do sentences work?" gets a relatively paltry 144 results, and most of these are concerned with more specific situations such as: "How do sentences work with each other" or "How do sentences work in paragraphs?" 　Even an academic paper about teaching basic writing to native speakers of non-standard English  offers what might be termed 2nd stage understanding by using the terms topic and comment where Michael Jackson would be the topic and isn't dead the comment. This is appropriate for the goals of this academic paper, but what I would like to offer is a model for how everybody, everywhere makes sentences; from small children to the most powerful people in society, we all, in whatever language, organise information in basically the same way.
   
         When trying to understand anything, It is always useful to have an overview.

     

　　Drawing back from observing anything can add a wealth of information that might otherwise go unnoticed, and that information will inevitably give rise to new and useful ideas.
      For example, taking a very long step back, it is possible to observe the surprising fact that dinosaurs lived on the other side of the galaxy!

Dinosaurs from space!

     So, if we accept that sentences are formed according to Info ----> Idea,
then any statement is basically the describing and explaining of the connection between the information and the idea, and and any question is basically seeking to understand the connection between information  and idea.
     Consequently, it would make sense, when teaching languages, to point out to people how it most basically works. That is to say, the start of language learning should be about connecting information with ideas. And then sentences. 
     That follows the model of how we learnt our own languages, yet it is not followed for the simple reason that we don't know this is the model.     Accordingly, TESOL dives straight into sentences without bothering to outline the most basic aspects of how sentences work.
     It is as though you were to teach Maths by starting with quadratic equations and leaping past simple addition.
     The fact that people still manage to learn languages is a testament to our greatest instinct and greatest instinctive skill: communication.
     And if that's true, why is there so much resistance to understanding communication beyond its ability to manipulate others; beyond its usefulness as a stick and a carrot?
     Could it be because cultural norms, those ideas that form culture, are made and encouraged by those who hold both stick and carrot?
      For, if we are to understand how communication works, then we can see what's up their sleeves.
      The same thing that's up ours.
    


     History has consistently produced, and been built on, new ideas. History used to have divine right and slavery and dinosaurs as the norm.
     Information changed and so did ideas and so did the dinosaurs.
     Michael Jackson is dead. So are the dinosaurs.

     Thanks to our ability to construct sentences, we construct information, which in turn, makes ideas.
    Michael Jackson isn't dead. And the dinosaurs lived on the other side of the galaxy.
    







* Although you probably shouldn't.
** A product of the interestingly opaque think-tank: Civitas

               

The Weight of Steel with Much Greater Elasticity.

The ancient Celtic people had a folktale about a fly. It went like this:
  
     The first fly was created by the first god from a fragment of cloud and a half-pebble, and as she moulded its tiny frame in her hands she put her breath on it and gave it life.

          The little fly became aware and asked: "What should I do?"

          The first god said: "You are tasked with touching everything. Take wing and fly everywhere and unto everything. Love all, and appreciate that joy and wonder resides both in the look of a princess and the ordure of pigs, in the opening of a flower and the closing of the grave.  And most importantly, you must fly true and honest and never lie."

          The fly became the happiest and most honest little creature that ever there was. It served creation's purpose with great pride and strove with all its airy might to connect and venerate all things.

         One day, the fly met a creature and stopped in wonder. The fly could not express the image it saw, so it asked: "What are you?"

         The creature replied : " I follow and never tire, so they call me dogged."

        "I see," said the fly, you will make a good companion, go to that man for he has need of you."

        "Thank you!" said, the creature and swiftly ran off as fast as  his four legs could carry him.

         Later, the fly encountered a large unhappy animal sat on a rock. "Whatever is the matter?" Asked the fly.

       "I am sorrowful for I crave the honey yet the bees sting me painfully."

        "Well then," said the fly, you must understand that there is no real reward without enduring, and that is why your sorrows you must bear.

        "I understand," said the animal and ambled away.

         One day, as the sun went down, the fly chanced upon a new creation. Looking upon this new thing with awe, it asked:"And what are you?"

       The reply came: "I don't know, I know no other creature and have never talked with another before! How glorious it is to connect! But, hold fast..., for that matter,  what are you?

        "I? I am the start of everything, I bring life out of dead things, I love all. But I have never been given a name either!"

        "Well then," said the newcomer, "pehaps we should call you fly, for that is what you do!"

        "That seems fair," replied the fly, "so what do you do?"

        "I take the finest silk and spin it to make resting places for others"

        The little fly clapped its hands with joy and said: "how beautiful! And how lovely to spend your time to labour for the benefit of others! We must call you spinner, for that is what you do!"

         "Why yes," said the other. "That's exactly what I do. You look tired, why don't you come in and rest?"

         "Why, thank you very much!" the fly said, and it gleefully flew forward. And then suddenly stopped in one place, violently shivered for a short time, and then moved no more. 
             

 Here is another story, about another fly:

                             The Information Fly. Chocks away!


       There is nothing in the realm of existence or in the realm of the imagination that is not, basically, information. Your heart (either physical or emotional), your environment with its friends and foes alike, and your most secret thoughts, and especially those thoughts that are secret even to you, they are all information.
        All of this information is usually moving about; our planet* moving through space at about 107 thousand kilometers per hour, our brain sending signals to our hands, the most mundane of our thoughts nowadays being treated like royalty as they whisked straight through to everywhere.
       Now and again, sooner or later, information will settle and move no more as it becomes stuck to the various strands of the web of understanding.  This web is spun by the The spider of Asking and Checking. (Belus Lugosius).
        This spider spins his web in the standard arachnid way:

                                By Dav92ide - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45094469

The spider of Asking and Checking will first spin a single thread connecting two points. This thread is the question: "What is it?" After a few maneuvers , the spider has built a simple pyramid shape, which is basically this:

                                                


  These are the most basic questions we use to understand anything. Our brains divide information up according to these categories even before we have learnt our native language well enough to articulate these concepts:
What is it? An object I can touch.
Which object? Here. Now.
What kind of object? Soft and warm.
What is soft and warm? It is a good thing.
What is a good thing? Food is a good thing.
Is this object then food? I will check...

       It is here that we begin to trap information in our own mental webs. This continues (hopefully, with a certain amount of increased sophistication) until we die:
       What is life? A gift from God. Which God? The one true God. What kind of God is it? Good and kind. Except when you are bad, then angry and wrathful and murderous and forgiving. Oh, and split into 3 parts, maybe.  I have some more questions....

       And so.....What? Which? What kind of ? are built upon with Who? When? Where? Whose? Why? and How? as the most basic and strongest threads. These are interwoven with the checking questions: Is it ...? Is it like ? For example? allowing us to get a good strong fix on any information.
     
     And so our web of understanding takes shape:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_classic_circular_form_spider%27s_web.jpg#/media/File:A_classic_circular_form_spider's_web.jpg

                                          


       The human animal has the ability to ask and check beyond those of others. This ability, allied with a superior ability to describe and explain, have allowed us to get where we are today, with all the wonders of  The Magic Box, The Magic Footprints  and of course,  The Magic Web.

        Basically then, the more questions we ask, with checking a vital part, the clearer our idea:

       What is this? A place.
       Which place? Our country.
       What kind of country? A kingdom.
       So we have a King? No, we have a Queen.
       Oh, why do we have a Queen? No kings were available.
       So Kings are better than Queens? Technically, yes.
       Why? It's tradition.
       Is tradition a good thing? Yes.
      Always? No.
      How do you know when it is good or not? That is a good question.
      Are you going to answer it? No.
     Why not? Well, basically because human beings have the capacity to communicate less well   than    they are capable of. It is a unique trait akin to tigers hunting less well, fish swimming less well, and Gilbert's potoroos potterooing less well.
      But communicating less well must offer some kind of advantage? Yes.
      It helps keep the powerful in place, doesn't it? Yes.
     It keeps everyone in their place, doesn't it? Yes, it keeps dreams in suspension.
     I'd like to become a professional footballer, how about my dream? Well, it's time for bed, you can  dream all you want when you are asleep, Prince George, but not when you are awake.
     Why not? It's tradition.


      Over(and under, and around) all, we understand things when we can connect information to an idea. As a result, one person's understanding of something may be entirely different for another. The only way we can understand better is to attempt to get more or better information in order to have more or  a better idea.
     However, our basic animal operating system plugs in information automatically to sockets that radiate ideas of pure emotion. Thus we can understand things on a purely emotional level. In the magic sorting house of the human soul every type of mail goes into the bins marked "good" and "bad", and "don't care" flung there by chimpanzees wearing little postal hats who are, at the same time, watching football, eating crisps, drinking beer, thinking about sex and masturbating. And all the while there are never any dead letters.

    If the same kind of mail constantly gets thrown into the "good" bin, then it will become securely fixed in that part of the web of understanding. It will take asking and checking to consider whether the mail really is good, or whether it should be considered "bad" or maybe: "sometimes good" or "good in this context" or "good only when flying a helicoptor" or an infinite amount of other possibilities.
   To consider things in that way requires the human postal workers of our brain to grab the mail from the chimps and consider other possibilities. The chimps will always be waiting to grab it back and they will be actively tugging at our sleaves, and themselves, to try and get us to watch the football and think about sex. The little monkeys.

    Human history shows us that any improvement in our lives is a direct result of better communication. But we should understand that The Post Office of the Apes, is the place where we all basically live, and that establishment is a madhouse, a madhouse! Any attempt to crate a new drawer will be met by trepedation, and any attempt to open a new door to see outside will elicit outright fear; and that's just from ourselves. We also have to deal with other  human beings manipulating those basic feelings to convince people that they won't like what they might find in the Forbidden Zone.
    And sometimes they are right.


     Ayn Rand wasn't a chimpanzee**, but  tried to convince people that everything would be better if only we could understand that  A is A and can never be anything else. But as communication always works as Information -------> Idea, where any information can be connected to any idea, then A can be A, but it can also be B or C or a Gilbert's potoroo, or An Alan Greenspan Floral Tribute.
    A madhouse, a madhouse!
    We construct our own webs of understanding, but we do require help. To do everything ourselves from scratch is too much for any single person. In fact, our lives are most profitably played out in cooperation with others. For a  lot of connections have been made, and found to be very practical, long before we were ever summoned into existence.
      Often, it can be easier just to wear other people's ideas, because they often are soft and warm. But is it always a good idea? 
     What is a good idea?  One good idea is that we  always have the ability to cast these hundred-hand clothes off and make our own. It' s just that you will have to wrestle a chimpanzee in order to so .
    And those things can take your face off.






* Unless you are reading this on a different planet.

** Or was, she? Terry Pratchett and Jared diamond may have some different ideas.

    

The Revenge of The Bicameral Brain!

I bet they wished they hadn't bothered.

      Hitler, like you or me, had a brain that operated in the same basic way as any ; that is to say, on the most basic principle of: Information -------------------> Idea.

For example, presented with the information of the movie poster above, you would probably envisage Nazi scientists gathered around a tank* of fluid, in which is kept alive the titular thinking organ.


You would, however, be wrong:

          

                                                        They saved Hitler's head and shoulders.       
          
           Of course, any movie offering this title would not instill in the prospective movie-goer the necessary sense of horror, dread and creepy interest, and quite possibly would suggest that someone had managed to dig out Der Fuhrer's old shampoo bottle.** Which is not quite the same thing.



       Anyway, as the brain works most basically as info -----------> idea, it turns out that a bicameral  or 2 roomed brain is a very good basic model for how we think (or, indeed, do anything else).
However, the bicameral brain, or bicameralism, has already been connected to the ideas of Julian Jaynes where it describes how, until comparitively recently in our history human beings were not conscious, and the voices in our heads were taken to be the whispering of gods.

It is my view that a better idea of the history of human development might be found by recognising that we do have a bicameral mind, and that it can be described like this:

                                            
  My brain, your brain, Hitler's brain, Julian Jaynes's brain, Ancient man's brain, Lowly Worm's brain.

In one room is the information whilst in the other room is the idea. Note that, unlike standard models, there does not have to be any transfer of information for communication to occur. Very simply, if there is information, there is an idea for one can not exist without the other.#
       Clearly, there is nothing within the material and the non-material realms that is not basically information. Therefore, not only is communication the only thing we ever do, it is also the only thing that ever happens.



In principio erat indicium,

        In the beginning was information



                                            
       Et indicium caro factum est,

                 and the information was made flesh

                                  
            Et habitavit in nobis.
                           and dwelt among us

                                                          -adapted version of the opening of John's Gospel.

   Of course, this model is of communication at its most basic and simplistic. What happens is that it evolves to look more like this (and this is why communication can be difficult):

Thankfully, our brains have developed## to cope with this mass of information --------> idea so that we can sort things out: often, and it's important to understand this, without trying. The brain is constantly sorting out the information and ideas without any conscious input, so that all the basic dog-level survival stuff is happening behind the scenes, as it were. Food ----> good.   New -----> caution. Lightning ------> scary.
Consequently, it appears that a question like "what causes this lightning?" is where god enters the room(s).  Dogs don't have gods, whereas humans do.
   So it might be said that a necessity for gods is human questions, which is why this bicameral brain model suggests that god has always, and will always be with us. Not only is the Devil in the details, but God is too. Moreover, it also suggests that our ideas of god can change.

The bicameral brain then, didn't just provide us with intimations of gods, it is god. God and gods. It is God, gods and dogs. It is your ideas and mine, The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and The Boys from Brazil.,Socrates and Socrates! The Sea of Tranquility and the Blarney Stone. Murasaki Shikibu and Rusty Brown.

                                                                                          Rusty gets an idea.      

 
          And if we were to acknowledge the dizzying amounts of information and ideas available by zooming out to observe the information -------> idea  process at an even higher scale of resolution, then it might look like this:

        
                                                                               As above, so below.
        

    A galaxy of ideas. And one of them is this: All philosophies, all religions, all ideas are simply branches of the church of communication. Of which I am the Pope.
     But so are you. So is Donald Trump. And so, also and quite marvelously I think, is the Pope. 





    
     So what? You might ask (and thereby kindly illustrating the information ------------------> Idea model.)  Well, on the scale of language teaching, we might at least inform people that this is how it all most basically works so they can do it themselves. Ideally, textbooks would be based on this model so that, again we might give people some idea of how it works. As things stand, it is rarely pointed out to students that the goal of language use is to go from information in English to idea in English. This basic step which is true for all native users of a language. Yet, and I think this is were many troubles start, native speakers have no clear idea of how they do it.  Why make things more difficult than they necessarily have to be? Why not explain the most basic step?

Unless, of course, there is profit to be made from (and systems and jobs and reputations to be protected by) keeping things vague? Or pushing only certain ideas?
    




Vulture, Reed, folded cloth, little.
I am (don't laugh) not a neuroscientist. So I am in no way suggesting that this model is the only useful one for understanding how the brain works. It is however a model for how the brain works, and I would suggest that all the wonderful discoveries of neuroscience can, without much effort, fit into this model. Whether you would actually want to do this, is another question.
As always, there are other ideas.

 The ancient Egyptians described the brain thus:




The glyphs represent sounds that added up to a word that roughly translates to “skull-offal.”  With the information available to them, this was their idea.




It is my idea that the model that has been discussed here might offers many more avenues of exploration and understanding than  skull offal.

Or you may wish to dismiss this idea completely. You're a Pope; you can make your own decisions.


Or not.

Or you may have another idea.
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* "There were two tropical fish in a tank, and one said to the other: 'hey! Do you know how to drive this thing?'"
                   - Ken Dodd.

** Although this scenario does tease the idea of time-travel, as Procter and Gamble didn't start producing Head and Shoulders until 1961.***


*** Although, the accusations that have been made about Procterand Gamble's involvement in forced and child labour+ may prompt the question of: What were they up to in World War 2?****

**** Helping bring down the Nazi swine, it appears. Hooray!


+ Not to mention the accusations of dark occultism....++


++Which brings us back again...+++


+++ Although, with all of this, plus the proper consideration of P and G products: Ivory Soap (white supremacy) Flash (nudity) and Fairy (gay agenda), THEY SAVED HITLER'S HEAD AND SHOULDERS is looking better and better.++++


++++ Might clean up at the box office.

# Absence of information is itself information, and no idea is itself an idea.

## You may wish to add "been" before "developed." It's up to you.

                                                                             Wow!



(Something) -----------> Which-finder Specific vs. General Whatkindof.

       “he met with the Devill, and cheated him of his Booke, wherein were written all the Witches names in England, and if he looks on any Witch, he can tell by her countenance what she is.”
― Matthew Hopkins, The Discovery of Witches and Witchcraft: The Writings of the Witchfinders

        

The Whichfinder specific: MACA*

      
     Matthew Hopkins the famous hunter of witches in 17th century England was, like all of his kind, very sure of his own ideas. He knew what he was looking for and had the necessary methods to achieve his goal. In his own specific way, he was doing what any of us do generally. For, at the most basic level, we must all deal with information to arrive at our ideas.
    The most basic way our brains organise  information  is like this**  (Whether ye be Matthew Hopkins, Mary Hopkin, or a Hopi.):
             

The capstone of Bela Lugosi's pyramid is also its foundation...**

         So, once you know what something is, the information will basically then be further sorted by two paths: The question: Which (thing)? and the question What kind of (thing)?
{Where (thing) has been defined by the first question: What is (it)?}       All of this is more difficult to describe and explain than to actually do. In fact, native speakers tend to sort this information automatically, which is one reason why it is not formally taught to people. It is, however, the foundation upon which all other information rests, so it is a good idea to let people know what is going on in terms of the sorting of the most basic information. Thus we should take note of The Whichfinder Specific and General Whatkindof.

General Whatkindov. Is he big or small? Russian or Prussian? Does he have a pickelhaube? A Mitre? Does he have a fake moustache or a real one? Can his name really be Helmuth?

.

           Even if you operate in the straight-forward world of gibbets, giblets and gore, your mission will benefit from extra information. Which (witch)? and What kind of (witch)? {for one may be wasting one's time on a low-level witch when the Queen of witches is using her broomstick to make a clean getaway.+}
For those of us not dealing with the simple minded world of stakes, faggots and ducking-stools, we have to employ these basic questions to have a better idea of what we are talking about.

    For example:               (something) -------------> (a hat)


                                     Which (hat)? -------------> (this hat)

                             What kind of (hat)? ------> (a big hat)
                                                                               or
                                                                         (a cloth hat)
                                                                              or
                                                                           (a mitre)
                                                                             or
                                                                         (a cap)***

                          

     On an important note (especially for Tesol in Japan), any idea of Which....? or What kind of....? is itself, most basically, something. Thus, like articles, information such as: my, your, her or this, that or big, cloth, are part of the information or idea of something, and not separate from it.
Why then, do text-books neither present language like this, nor bother to explain that this is how it most basically works?
Unless I'm wrong and all of this is a rubbish idea?

        If we know what something is, we then want to know which (thing) or what kind of (thing) it is.
                    Remarkably, our brains do this automatically without our paying that much attention to the process. Consider the following information:

                                       The dog saw the cat.

              and                   The gee saw the gaw
                                  
  Naturally, we would pause and ask: "What is a gee?" "What is a gaw?"

                The point is that we do the same with the first sentence without noticing we are doing it. Within our brain, we ask "what is a dog"? and because we can connect it to other ideas/information we can understand it. In fact, understanding anything, involves a web of connections that we have simpistically reduced to the concept of "meaning". It might be illustrated like this:

No wonder communication can be difficult...#

           Most basically, if we can attach information to an idea then that is the basic step of understanding. If we can not attach information to idea then we don't understand, and then, if we want to improve the communication we must ask questions.

               As a language student is bound to be faced with information that they can not attach to an idea, it is remarkable that there is generally no basic training in Tesol in particular, and education in general, in those questions that constitute Bela Lugosi's pyramid. It's almost as though people are being trained not to understand things...
               

               It is, I think, a better idea to acknowledge that the Wachowski's after all were right: we live in the matrix. Although happily, this one doesn't necessarily involve existing in a womb of artificial amniotic fluid with a tube in the back of your neck.++ This one consists of information, which is basically the only thing there is. We cut our way through the forest of information by putting things, everything, into the basic categories suggested by questions and from all of this follow ideas.

              Questions, then, are vital to understanding above a basic animal level, necessary to plot our way through the matrix.
            Which is exactly why questions (asking and checking) play so little part in traditional education as it makes it easier to control people. Consequently, in Tesol specifically, the importance of the most basic of questions is not recognised (Quite apart from the fact that, in Japan, the idea of which....? amongst both students and teachers is like this:
                                 Information------------------------------------> Idea

                                  Which...?    ----------------------------------> A or B

                     What this entails is that students can only connect a which question with the idea of a choice between two things. So that people are stuck in a pit of gloom dealing with some bourgeois zombie asking only: Which do you prefer, tea or coffee? when they could be climbing their own mountain of enlightenment, and the sights you can see from there. For we live our entire lives in the double embrace of the Which-finder Specific and General Whatkindov. It may be a good idea to acknowledge it.

                   And in relation to education generally, and its very specific idea of how things work, consider the reverence in which the competitive spelling bee is held. An event which basically encourages young minds to remember words that they will almost never use or hear or read.  Odd when you think about it, isn't it? Especially when there are no D+E bees or Bela Lugosi bees.
                   But there it is, general education ignores the basic structure of communication and concentrates only on the warts, so specifically, Tesol follows too. Grinning and giggling as it helps to tie the victim to the stake. No questions asked.

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* Making ambivalence clear(er) again (and always.)

**  ...(also looks like a witches hat...). Startlingly enough, the English textbook for beginners that I have mentioned before contains the following dialogue:
                                     
                                                  Ken: "Is that a hat?"
                                                 Mary: "No, it isn't. It is a cap."

   Let's be clear, within the context of head gear, A cap IS a hat. Also, I doubt very much that this conversation has ever taken place between two human beings, which makes it somewhat less than ideal for an example for beginners, I think. Moreover, as a cap (キャップ) is a hat (帽子)　in Japanese also, then the reason for using this bizarre exchange as an example becomes even more obscure.

*** A cap! A kind of hat!                                                    
+Aythangyew


++ Or does it?
# By the way, does this look like iron filings on paper over a magnet to you? If communication is, basically, the only thing that ever happens, then it is reasonable to presume that, on a most basic level, things will resemble other things. Communication might be thought of as a Vector Field, or as Schrodinger's Hat, where the idea hangs indeterminately until we decide what it is.##
##From this, we can observe that first of all, communication requires agreement with oneself, and then agreement with others. Overall, agreement with the universe will be generally helpful: I am Superman, watch me jump off this building. I'm cold, boiling water will make me warmer. The basic history and success of the United States, built on the ideas of the Enlightenment and science, strongly suggests that Donald Trump will continue that fine tradition.