Text Messages: It’s More Complex Than You Might Think.

       The world is full of conversation; it’s full of moving mouths and noises. The world is full of sounds, zounds, politically motivated paroxysmal outbursts, homiletics, burps, and whistles; it’s full of opinion and monolithic  grandiloquence, symbol, adulation, and hyperbolic forms of verbal flatulence so potent as to blow one’s head clean off his or her shoulders. And here, before us (the viewers and listeners) is this vast visual and sonic landscape of purported fact and conscripted meaning; a horizon so infinitely complex and convoluted that it makes the tautological nature of the dictionary (that which is used to define) seem, well, tautological, circular, and reckless. So, while you (the readers/viewers/listeners of my conversation) are deciphering the above hypercomplex paragraph, let me just add some other variables to this equation.

       Rene Descartes is probably most famous for his cogito ergo sum, that is, I think therefore I am. Most of us have heard this phrase even if we aren’t totally sure what it means. In a sort of simplistic truncation of its idea, cogito focuses on that of one’s consciousness. What it means is this: since I have a consciousness, and since I have given myself the title “I,” then surely I must exist apart from other “I”s, and regardless of whether or not I can truly know that this separation exists, at the very least I can claim that I can think about it. I wonder why such a phrase became so popular?

       Let’s return to my first paragraph. The conversation I’m referring to is indeed complex, for it happens not only between humans, but it happens between everything else as well: rockslides (gravity and erosion), falling leaves (seasonal cycles, gravity, weather patterns), rising and falling tides (lunar cycle), meteorological systems (rising and falling of barometrical pressure), compost (chemical composition and de-composition), et cetera. Of course, without human consideration, these “conversations” have no inherent meaning. One must try to come to terms with the fact that “meaning” and “function” are disparate concepts, (though they often get linked together and influence each other, and both are a sort of discourse with their own, unique vocabulary). Function and meaning are constructed; they are both forms of impression, i.e., of narrative, and they find their domain within a specific semiological system: the signifier, the signified, and the association between the two: the sign. 

        But, it is hard to decipher what is fact and what is fiction, or what is fact from what is fiction. After all, does not everything fit snugly into a sort of fictive framework, especially when considering how these conversations are developed within the human mind? Information enters the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, etc.) which must then be translated into a language that the brain understands. We gaze upon the American flag and see the colors red, white, and blue, and (unless of course colorblind) one can see that these three colors are quite vivid and salient. This is a language that the brain understands, that is, the abstract conceptualization of what is actually a quality of light and the organization of such information. But the concepts of both color and light exist within a scientific discourse, and discourse is just a euphemism for a symptomatic system of beliefs. Scientists will certainly disagree with my previous claim, and this doesn’t surprise me, for their job is to observe and argue. But here is my point, and it hearkens back to the idea of cogito. Just like every other discourse, be it a theological, philosophical, scientific, cultural, and/or societal, each discourse is confined within its own semiological system. In short, even if two very different discourses operate within the same language, (say a debate in English between an Atheist using a scientific discourse and a Theist using a theological discourse) both entities are using their cogito, that is, their own consciousness as an affirmation of truth when in fact all they are arguing over is a belief or a system of signification. Though the two discourses exist within the same language, they are not equal; they are not talking about the same things. Consider oil and vinegar salad dressing: you could shake it for 2000 years. And, as soon as you stopped what would happen?

         Belief requires an extravagant suspension of dis-belief, and some of us have not this specific kind of capacity. We look back at the American Flag what do we see? A piece of cloth. But it’s not what we see that is true in this case. And this is my point. When looking at the flag we don’t see what it is but what it represents, and this, of course, all depends on which side of the pond we’re on. The whole world is like this. The world is a teleprompter: an image not so much fixed as it is fixated upon, a sound stuck in our ever-present ears; an evolving sensation that becomes true when in fact truth is much more complex than most give it credit. Nietzsche said that “Truth is a mobile army of metaphor, metonymy, and anthropomorphism,” and this sentence is, well, seemingly true. However, though I am drawn to this sentence for many reasons, the idea that I cannot escape from is that his sentence is only a metaphor; it is a metaphor for humanity and by humanity, and it reminds me of my favorite paradox. But as such a beautiful paradox is wont to operate, it’s a sentence that both mesmerizes and sends the brain into a special kind of meltdown. Ready? Ok, here it is:

This sentence is false.

                                                                         Just like this essay is a lie.