SOCIETAL KNOWLEDGE

In these pages, we have bemoaned the subjugation of the visual and the elevation of language.  Let’s look a bit closer at how language actually works so we can see what we are up against. Consider the phrase “pencil on a desk.” Three general ideas are in play; pencil, on and desk.

Each of the words is nothing more than a tag, or category. In the category “pencil”, for example, each of us might think of any wide range of types of pencils, blue, yellow, mechanical, one with a gummy bear eraser, etc. And of course the same generalizations follow for “on” and “desk”

Yet the concepts of pencil, on and desk cannot be understood without the image of each of these in your mind. Can’t happen. The word pencil is meaningless without the visual image.

If you agree with this thesis, then you will have to join me as we scratch our heads as we try to understand the mitigation of the visual in our western culture. Instead of our societal predilection for teaching:

how to spell pencil
that it is a noun
that the plural of pencils is done with an apostrophe
etc.,

Why are we not requiring all of our students, each and every one of them, to draw a pencil as part of a basic education? Why are we not requiring a detailed and comprehensive visual understanding of pencil? If the genus is the visual, I just don’t get why it is so subjugated.

Now you might say that without the tags that language provides, how could society rapidly advance using heuristic logic? My answer is that everyone’s mental image of a pencil is a visual fact. The enrichment of these visual facts would only deepen our societal understanding of “pencil.” So when we use the word “pencil” we would know so much more about it, as our mental images would be richer.

This deeper understanding, which can only come thru the visual realm, would create richer societal knowledge. And surely you must agree that if it is one thing that we lack, it is societal knowledge.