"Ed Huntress" wrote to:

...... Although the above may sound a little unusual, the book's premise is
brilliant: his point is that there are liars and then there are
bull****ters. Liars are actually less corrupt: they know the truth, and
just chose to deny it. Bull****ters don't care for the truth; they will
spin anything in any way that suits their goals. Doesn't it sound
familiar?

I've heard of the book. Maybe I'll read it some day. There's another
interesting theoretical approach, which is that it is *all* bull****, in the
sense that we make up for ourselves what is important and what is valued,
and that, rather than objective facts, is the realm in which individual
realities occur. These become our personal myths, and we end up living in
individual spheres of understanding, in which there is no such thing as
direct communication. It's a kind of depressing view but it's interesting to
consider.

It's at the cutting edge of particle physics, where there is no
reality apart from the observer.

There's also the problem of the survival-oriented 'lizard brain'
controlling our response to stimuli when more of the prefrontal cortex
is appropriate.


But I'll leave the resolution of that for the philosophers. The simpler fact
is that the role language serves in commerce, religion, law, politics, and
many other realms is that of a tool that we employ to get what we want. Each
of those realms has a set of rules, or ethics, which define what is
legitimate and not in the employment of language. We will never see
eye-to-eye about those rules across the gaps between those who want
something from others and the others who have the things that are wanted by
the first group. There is no "playing fair" that satisfies both sides.

That's the way most of the world has been, probably since the beginning.
We're OK with it as long as we don't lose sight of what is written or spoken
persuasion or coercion, and what is not. Being in tune with these roles of
language is one way to define what it means to understand a culture.

Could the story of the Tower of Babel be talking about the loss of
communication without language?

Gio