Monday 6 August 2007

Pic of the day: In humans, the urge to communicate can be overwhelming. It could be argued that it is an instinct that defines us as humans every bit as much as our upright and mostly hairless bodies do.

But why talk?

I was quietly looking at my Gmail page when I noticed a link on top, titled "How to start a conversation". I did click on it, not really because I wanted to know how to start a conversation, but WHY.

In this case, the link was to a serious and friendly article on about.com, a website full of good advice. The context, it turned out, was dating. Looking for relationship. Looking for love in all the right places.

I guess that is a reasonable answer to my silent question. I mean, even porcupines must mate or die out. In my case, the choice fell on "die out", although I sincerely hope this is a long way into the future. With my sims, their life is so short, I don't have the heart to let them live and die alone. Not even the evil ones. But for my humble self, there is the illusion of a very long lifespan, and so I am unmoved.

The thing is, I can talk to people quite fine if I have a reason to. In the past I have occasionally been in gatherings of people for some common purpose (such as software instructors), and I have frequently taken the initiative to talk with people. After a while they get to know each other, and in the end I am the one who does not know and is not known, because I really don't know WHY you would want to talk with random people about random things you are not paid for. Wouldn't it be better to just write a blog, so those who want to know can do so and the rest don't need to?

But this of course presumes that factual content plays a role in an ordinary conversation, which is a bad presumption at the outset. Even when there is exchange of factual information, it is only a small part of the much larger emotional exchange. Relationship in the wider sense. What human can and cannot talk with each other about, and the way in which they do it (or fail to) defines so much of their relationship with each other as long as they live at arm's length. For most of the people we meet, this is pretty much as far as it goes. Do we talk about the things we agree on, or the things we disagree on? Do we talk about others, and if so, friends or enemies? There is a lot of talk going on. A LOT of talk. But not from me.

This is the problem with a journal such as this. If I don't "talk" incessantly, you won't see me at all. You would not even know that I existed, unless you're one of the few readers who have met me in the flesh. But in the flesh I don't talk incessantly, quite the opposite. I am paying more attention now that I know my job is bound to change, and it seems I talk perhaps a quarter of an hour on a workday, not at all on weekends. Yes, that includes telephone. No wonder I am single. Or is that the reason? How would I know? I know I talked a lot when I was a boy. (As opposed to now that I am a man, not as opposed to when I was a girl…)

That reminds me, some weeks ago I read about a study from some university. Students were fitted with talk measuring devices, small gadgets that registered whether you were talking rather than what you were talking about. The sensational result was that the men talked as much as the women. There was no significant difference between the two groups, although each individual differed from the next, of course. I thought it was an accepted fact that women talk more than me. Women certainly talk a lot more than I do! I think the reason there may be that they studied college students. Other age groups may differ. And most notably, I think men without higher education are less likely to talk. But I don't know for sure. Further study is in order! I know however who use their mobile phone on the bus. This may be divine retribution because women used to mock cell phones as executive toys. But then again divine retribution is rarely magic, but simply another way of viewing the laws of nature. After all, one man's law of nature is another man's God's way of usually doing things.

What I know is that I certainly don't feel such a deep and undeniable need for talk that I bother people who are doing other things, or just sitting there, or people with telephones who may or may not be doing something, or people with Instant Messenger who may or may not be doing something. Only in emergencies would I bother another person. There are probably diagnosed autists that talk more than I do. (Especially now that it is ridiculously simple to be diagnosed as some sort of "autist spectrum".)

For children, the situation is drastically different. Children acutely need to download humanity from those who have it, hopefully starting with their parents. You may say that children only come with a rudimentary operating system that connects to others and starts downloading. Once our main form of communication moves from "snuggle" to "talk", a child will be compelled to talk to pretty much anything that moves and many that don't. This cannot and should not be avoided. (Again, autism is a special case.) It is natural, I think, for this to fade gradually over time, but never quite disappear.

While we may have an instinct for speech, we may not have one for reading. But it seems that we are able to gradually substitute the reading/writing process for speech, or at least some of us are. Perhaps there is simply an instinct for communication, and it can take one form or another. (In favor of this is the condition known as true hyperlexia, in which a child learns to read at about the age of two, usually spontaneously or with only token help. These children often have severe problems with verbal communication for the rest of their lives, and their social lives are hampered. I posit that their communication instinct may become diverted.)

But there is yet another communication. It is the communication within. In its simplest form, the child starts talking to itself. Over the course of the years, the dialog becomes internalized. For many people, this internal monolog (or dialog, in some cases) lasts throughout life. One funny thing which a tailor once pointed out: When people are upset, you can often see their lips moving frantically. They are explaining things to themselves, convincing themselves of this or that, probably that it is the other person's fault and that they are innocent.

But there is a more immediate feedback of self to self which does not depend on spoken words. An example of this is the conscience, which in most people reacts immediately, faster than words. And in meditation, we can learn to "commune" with the self in a way more like gazing than speaking. There are also those who in prayer seem to experience more of a silent exchange than a dialog with God. (Of course you are free to have your own opinions on who or what God is, but that is beyond the scope of this entry.)

For a couple years now, I have known that fully autist children tend to be born of highly intelligent, introverted parents (often known today as "geeks"), and also tend to have larger brains as babies. This raises the intriguing possibility that they too may have found another outlet for the instinct to communicate: That they have established the feedback loop in their own brain at a too early age, before learning to speak. That they are trapped in their own internal, wordless dialog that leaves no need or wish to communicate with others. Since this full-blown condition seems to be incurable, I guess we will never know.

It is not quite that absolute with me. After all, I still read and write, although the pull into silence is getting stronger. But I hardly see that as a bad thing at 48 years, though it would have been at 48 weeks. At my age, I think it is natural, even good. To expand into another realm. In the religious traditions, many prophets and church fathers went into the desert and came back to teach the people. Of course we have forgotten those who went into the desert and never came back. But I still think it is worth it. And I hope to continue to communicate with you all. Watch this space. But don't expect any phone calls unless life is at stake.