Gleanings

On thoughts and actually communicating them
9:21 AM - Posted by N - 0 comments
I am subscribed to TED and occasionally watch/listen to talks by the big and famous. Once a year about 1000 people from around the world gather at TED conferences to exchange ideas. Today I watched Steven Pinkerv. He is a professorDepartment of Psychology at Harvard University, and used to teach in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He conducts research on language and cognition and this particular talk was about Steve's book from 2005 called "The Stuff of Thought".

He explains the nuances of communicating thoughts in a particular way and the subconscious characteristics that cause humans to choose one form of expression over the other.
I often wonder about communication problems between individuals. Some people seem to read between the lines quite OK, some don't get it, some get it wrong!! I just reached the conclusion that communicating a thought ought to depend on the recipient. You change the way you say comething based on who you are talking to. In fact this is one of our faourite open discussions in my house. Dh feels 2+2 is 4 no matter who you are communicating to. I agree and disagree in that the way you communicate 2+2 is 4 makes all the difference.

Part of my job is to be able to 'understand' what one party intends to do and communicate that intent to the other party ( without loss in translation, of course!) . On the face of it, it is really no big deal, but when I started researching it,I discovered among other things, Steven Pinker and the whole science behind language, articulation, perception, communication and conceptualization. Really 'Thought'-provoking stuff :)




Children
9:40 AM - Posted by N - 1 comments
I came across this piece of profound philosophy by Kahlil Gibran a while ago and chanced upon it again this morning. Its a strange motivator, but I wanted to save it in a personal space and that's how I got started here.. so here goes..

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Somehow, the idea of being a bow that needs to bend backwards while being stable is so deep and true, it's almost scary..