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.
