Two Hundred and Fifty Seven

The theme of the latest issue of the NYRB is language.  It’s also about Trump, as everything is now.

It contains an article about freedom of speech, in which the author says it’s a sham unless it also includes freedom of action, because speech is action and vice versa—-which has obvious relevance to the protests which Trump condemns.  Another article with obvious relevance to Trump is about 'disinformation' and ‘fake news’.

Tallyrand said we invented language in order to hide our thoughts from each other.  But it’s not only our thoughts we hide, and not only from each other.  The things we tell ourselves, as well as the things we tell each other, are usually attempts to hide the things we do, because we know they’re not the things we should do.

We’ve done so much of which we’re now ashamed.  But worse than remembering all the shameful things we’ve done, however hard we try to forget them, is not being able to remember the reasons why we once believed we had to do them.

The article I found most interesting is about animal language.

It begins by reviewing all the rôles talking animals have played in the human imagination, from Aesop’s fables to Hollywood cartoons.  The author says animals have always talked to us, but only recently have we begun to seriously listen.

We’ve always known that other animals speak to us, but we chose not to listen for the same reason adults choose not to listen to children, men choose not to listen to women and masters choose not to listen to slaves.  How could we go on exploiting them if we took them seriously?

We also know—and have always known—that not only are all animals sentient, but they aren’t the only sentient beings.  

What we know is what all sentient beings know.  Humans differ not only from all other animals, but from all other sentient beings, in pretending we alone are sentient.  Otherwise how could we go on exploiting them?

We don’t know enough about the beings we call living and those we call nonliving to define the difference between them, so how can we define the difference between the living beings we call sentient those we call nonsentient?  But the difference between being and nonbeing seems more important from my perspective.  No mind without body.

I think we all know that all beings are sentient to some degree—no body without mind—but we’re told that’s just sentimental anthropomorphism by those we call logical.  The reductio ad absurdum of this logic is when we're told that even we are merely meat machines because only matter is real, and mind an illusion (but whose?).

Another article was about a current television show in which animals seem human, according to the author, because they're self-destructive and know it, but can’t help themselves.  That, more than their use of language, makes these animals seem human.  

Unlike most animal languages, the primary goal of human language is not the communication of what we know, but of what we learn.  Knowing what we know—what all sentient beings know—doesn't make us human.  The delusion that only we are sentient enables us to pretend we're human.  And in order to sustain that delusion we must be surrounded by other, equally deluded beings.  We learn their language, say what they say and pretend to believe what they pretend to believe.  All animals speak, but only we learn to speak as actors do, impersonating the people we pretend to be.