::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: General Refl’s . . .(III)
There is a class of conversations marked by single, and multiple, individual's(s') eagerness to listen and a genuine expectation to attempt as direct a mental connection as is possible, so as to glean the maximum from following not just the words spoken but the pauses and emphases and paths of thought of another. To open one’s self to the style of cognition, and the actual mental path and processes of another, is to invite the study of how another thinks as just as intellectually valuable—if not more so in some cases—as what can be found agreeable or objectionable in what is actually being said. The other individual, being the genuine subject of this study/process, becomes wholly loved in advance. It is very strange to understand and communicate this. I can say it no better than that, though I will try . . . In advance of knowing anything at all about them; as if anything that could already be attached to an idea of them is suspended from that present moment—They are loved without attributes.
This has to happen; just like when true love is present in a romantic relationship it is necessarily the case that both persons are made vulnerable enough so each has the ability to hurt the other. Vulnerability lets another in, and I do not think there is any true/real love where there is no vulnerability. And even further: To the degree that there exists vulnerability, there also exists some portion of genuine love. So I will extrapolate . . . To whatever quality and degree we are engaging in idea exchange with another, there is present some proportional quality and degree of vulnerability and consequentially some degree of genuine love. Our ultimate goal then, when we truly desire the freest flow of idea exchange—and are not deceiving ourselves with the want to satisfy some other psychological preoccupation—Our ultimate goal in the freest flow of idea-exchange should be complete and transparent vulnerability.
The value and emergence of this, as a practical reality, I can probably best explain in an example of how I experienced it and became aware of its truth and power as a concept and as an active tool to be continuously called upon and triggered . . . I will leave out the nuanced particulars of the story to emphasize that it is not these things that are most important, as it is the paths of thought which have produced the point.
I was having a conversation in a group that contained a good friend of mine, with whom idea exchange had been fluid from day one. Though his girlfriend and I, from the second we met, had in-between us some inexplicable intellectual tension that frustrated our attempts to communicate so badly that it eventually relegated our communication to making her boyfriend our proxy. Never had I experienced such a phenomenon, especially in another who seemed to highly value human interaction and conversation. (It is probably accurate that, at this point, I had something of the notion in my head that it was my fault and that I could fix the communication barrier by trying harder, and if this didn’t work that the problem was in her head and/or effort.) So on this particular day, the conversation had flowed so that the others in the group had pursued an offshoot of the original topic (on the nature and barriers of language, ironically) so that both she and I had recognized each other’s voices as the only ones still wanting to pull on the main thread. We settled on each other’s eyes cautiously; we were pushed through a pre-existing emotion, no doubt containing bundles of assumptions about the other, because now we shared the same want.
I already knew what she wanted to explain to me. She wanted to impress upon me how amazing it was that a particular character, both word and picture, in [A specific tribal LANGUAGE] was used to represent [a specific, transcendent MEANING by virtue of its symbol and understanding as a composite]. What I needed her to understand was that the meaning of the character is limited [to its cultural context of MEANING]. I was interjecting “yes” after “sure” to gain my break (by also passively wanting to feign support for her idea) so I could ground her illogical, wandering, liberal, mystical and fantastical predilections in sound lo—Until she broke herself –midsentence-- on whatever it was in the nagging expressions of my half-hearted will about which she, too, must have attached a growing distaste. And then she willfully subjected herself to me. Everything about her tone and demeanor tuned in on me, and in the sharpest halt, a barely perceptible pivot, she had made herself genuinely vulnerable and transparent in front of me. She said: “I want you to teach me how you think.” As soon as she said this I felt disarmed of mental barriers I never knew I was building and using against her. I felt an immediate, direct and impossible connection to her that shook me so much from where my mind had been looking that that all I could see now was my own ignorance in overlooking the magnitude and scope of her point. . . .FULL MEANING. Her vulnerability—instantly and sincerely inviting me to impress my ignorance upon her—literally carried the opposite effect. I was let in to her, by her submitting to me. This happened quickly, and I had to recognize and act on the invitation (which I did purely with trust in what was created in me emotionally by my recognition of a love advanced to me out of a suspension of all that may have brought to characterize me before this moment). I could not speak but to say “Oh my god.” I finally explained myself to her, and came away with this valuable notion of the operations of vulnerability: I had to be vulnerable so I could walk on her words, as there were no pathways there yet in my own head.
I think this gets at it a bit. I also want to go into emotional responses to idea exchange that are characterized by other pre-conditions and lead to myriad impasses . . . I also want to tie/compare/contrast this notion of emotion, vulnerability and love in idea exchange to Socrates’ bringing of someone to a state of APORIA by exasperating them through definition and an endless regression of refutation. And in a later post, I want to show the communal function of this concept as I see it’s uses easily confounded to support, and “inform,” zeitgeist societal paradigms (macro), specifically responding to how I understand Dr. Marina Berzins McCoy to approach the term. Catharsis by surrogate will be of special interest here.
Also, I think this story and the function of vulnerability would be interesting if discussed within Aristotle's conception of reciprocation in friendship; again, not presupposing the value of the polis over the individual-- but going on a journey to detect whatever community would naturally precipitate from knowing an individual (and group of individuals) vulnerably, specifically and transparently.
but I’ll end here with these thoughts for now....
Thoughts anyone?
