Your thoughts create your speech, your speech create communication, your communication create reactions, reactions creates relations, relations is the mirror of your well-being.
Universal Education for Compassion and Wisdom
Have you ever wondered about how speech and languages are important for us human beings?
The unique with us humans is suicide. Suicide is an action that no other living creature on this planet committs. How come? What distinguishes us from other life?
The answer could be the speech. Humans can speak and communicate in a way that no other creature is able to. Speech have enormous cultural and biological advantages, but also psychological costs. Speech in a wider sense (images, thoughts, writing, singing etc), is an efficient help to pass culture in all its forms. Let us not forget our capacity of quickly communicating vital information.
We can connect through reflecting and sharing information about our inner self. This way we can strengthen our community. But speech can also cause trouble. It can even cause pain.
Speech is an abstract phenomenon which enables us to interpret and misinterpret each other. Negative feelings are often associated to neutral verbal activities - words. Word have power. When you think or say a word, you are starting a series of activities. Words create images, feelings, physical sensations and actions. Plus, words have the power to create pervasive basic perceptions about ourselves if you allow them to exist in our conscious for too long. If you tell yourself: "I am worthless and ugly" five hundred times a day - how will you feel like in the evening? What will you do?
Words are not objective, true or even real. But they still have the power to create suffering. An experiment to test that would only be possible on a human being. A stately lion or a hot-tempered ant do not have the capacity to comprehend words such as useless and ugly. None the less say those or communicate those words to others. The consequence: the ant will continue struggling, maybe suffering, maybe happy. At least, she will not feel ashamed or bad about herself.
The words also have the power to affect us positively and functionally. We have, luckily, also the capacity to sometimes think good, helpful and happy thoughts or thoughts which are neutral and realistic. The problem for us are knowing which ones are good to socialize with. Which ones should we let affect us?
The negative thoughts have a tendency to dominate many peoples minds, creating unpleasant pain, which worsen their lives. We need some sort of mental discipline and training in order to identify and socialize with the helpful, realistic and happy thoughts, knowing that they, as well as the dark and negative, are just that - thoughts! With other words: words as constructions.
What is interesting about culture and speech, is moreover how languages can form our minds and behaviour.
Scientists say that in these days, the overlapping of different cultures are creating a new kind of human being: Homo Biculturalis.
Luigi Anolli, professor of psychology at the University of Bicocca, in Milan states that "During the study of Chinese Unviersity students in American campuses we discovered that these youngsters have a mind capable of moving with ease not only from one language to another, but also between different value systems. They are individul and hedonistic with their American friends, but respectful and modest with their Chinese counterparts".
We are not talking about schizofrenia or hypocrisy here: the fact is that their minds are really capable of functioning in two different ways without contradiction. Images obtained through magnetic resonance prove it: when the students are induced to feel American, they elaborate concepts such as "mother", "myself" and "another person", in different parts of the brain. When they are induced to feel Chinese the same concepts overlap in the same area of the brain.
Biculturalism which alter the architecture of the brain is the theme of the book of professor Anolli. "To have a mind equipped with many different cultural "tool boxes" will be crucial to move around in an increasingly interconnected world. It might become such an important factor for success that, in the long run, it could reveal itself as a reproductive advantage. In the human gene pool these brain characteristics will spread",
What differentiates the impact on the human mind when humans of today mix - in respect of before - is the social and technological conditions. For instance Italian immigrants in the United States first created a half-cast culture, then progressively, mixed in the melting pot. Today, cultural identities are stronger and contacts with mother homeland through travels and internet are intense and continuing.
"Individuals that grow up in between two cultures do not wish to be assimilated with one or the other. They rather wish to be a bridge between these", Agnolli says. "This gives them an extraordinary advantage, both as mental openness and professional possibilities. They are precious persons, that each country and region should value highly".
Universal Education for Compassion and Wisdom
Have you ever wondered about how speech and languages are important for us human beings?
The unique with us humans is suicide. Suicide is an action that no other living creature on this planet committs. How come? What distinguishes us from other life?
The answer could be the speech. Humans can speak and communicate in a way that no other creature is able to. Speech have enormous cultural and biological advantages, but also psychological costs. Speech in a wider sense (images, thoughts, writing, singing etc), is an efficient help to pass culture in all its forms. Let us not forget our capacity of quickly communicating vital information.
We can connect through reflecting and sharing information about our inner self. This way we can strengthen our community. But speech can also cause trouble. It can even cause pain.
Speech is an abstract phenomenon which enables us to interpret and misinterpret each other. Negative feelings are often associated to neutral verbal activities - words. Word have power. When you think or say a word, you are starting a series of activities. Words create images, feelings, physical sensations and actions. Plus, words have the power to create pervasive basic perceptions about ourselves if you allow them to exist in our conscious for too long. If you tell yourself: "I am worthless and ugly" five hundred times a day - how will you feel like in the evening? What will you do?
Words are not objective, true or even real. But they still have the power to create suffering. An experiment to test that would only be possible on a human being. A stately lion or a hot-tempered ant do not have the capacity to comprehend words such as useless and ugly. None the less say those or communicate those words to others. The consequence: the ant will continue struggling, maybe suffering, maybe happy. At least, she will not feel ashamed or bad about herself.
The words also have the power to affect us positively and functionally. We have, luckily, also the capacity to sometimes think good, helpful and happy thoughts or thoughts which are neutral and realistic. The problem for us are knowing which ones are good to socialize with. Which ones should we let affect us?
The negative thoughts have a tendency to dominate many peoples minds, creating unpleasant pain, which worsen their lives. We need some sort of mental discipline and training in order to identify and socialize with the helpful, realistic and happy thoughts, knowing that they, as well as the dark and negative, are just that - thoughts! With other words: words as constructions.
What is interesting about culture and speech, is moreover how languages can form our minds and behaviour.
Scientists say that in these days, the overlapping of different cultures are creating a new kind of human being: Homo Biculturalis.
Luigi Anolli, professor of psychology at the University of Bicocca, in Milan states that "During the study of Chinese Unviersity students in American campuses we discovered that these youngsters have a mind capable of moving with ease not only from one language to another, but also between different value systems. They are individul and hedonistic with their American friends, but respectful and modest with their Chinese counterparts".
We are not talking about schizofrenia or hypocrisy here: the fact is that their minds are really capable of functioning in two different ways without contradiction. Images obtained through magnetic resonance prove it: when the students are induced to feel American, they elaborate concepts such as "mother", "myself" and "another person", in different parts of the brain. When they are induced to feel Chinese the same concepts overlap in the same area of the brain.
Biculturalism which alter the architecture of the brain is the theme of the book of professor Anolli. "To have a mind equipped with many different cultural "tool boxes" will be crucial to move around in an increasingly interconnected world. It might become such an important factor for success that, in the long run, it could reveal itself as a reproductive advantage. In the human gene pool these brain characteristics will spread",
What differentiates the impact on the human mind when humans of today mix - in respect of before - is the social and technological conditions. For instance Italian immigrants in the United States first created a half-cast culture, then progressively, mixed in the melting pot. Today, cultural identities are stronger and contacts with mother homeland through travels and internet are intense and continuing.
"Individuals that grow up in between two cultures do not wish to be assimilated with one or the other. They rather wish to be a bridge between these", Agnolli says. "This gives them an extraordinary advantage, both as mental openness and professional possibilities. They are precious persons, that each country and region should value highly".
Animals DO commit suicide!
ReplyDeleteMy experience is more - in therapy: when people can express themselves, there is less danger of suicide, though.
The world IS a strange blace, sometimes so beautiful, then a valley of tears, not just the human world. And I do understand that one might say: No, I do not want this world!
We need speech to express ideas. There is the Meme - theory, which blows my mind: memes (Ideas) behave just as genes: they want to survive as long and in as many brains as possible. The need big brains, so evolution creates big brains. Then ideas use us as vehicles just as genes do. It is not that I have an idea: the idea has me!!!!
Kiki