languaging
Ferenc
Excerpt from above site
snip
As human beings we exist in a multidimensional interactional and
relational space in which most dimensions remain outside our
awareness. So we humans exist in a partially conscious and partially
unconscious interactional and relational space in which most
dimensions are unconscious. We (the authors) call this conscious and
unconscious interactional and relational space our psychic domain of
existence. Everything that we do takes place in us through our
operation in our psychic domain of existence, or better, in our
psychic existence, and as we change in the course of our living, our
psychic domain of existence changes. The psychic identity that a human
being has as he or she exists in the systemic dynamics in which he or
she conserves his or her particular identity as such, arises in the
relational space in which he or she lives as his or her self. Let us
now attend to language. Language is a manner of living together in
recursive consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of
behaviors, and must have arisen in the spontaneous coordinations of
behavior that takes place when living together; sharing space and food
in intimacy occurs. When some configuration of relations within a
systemic, or some configuration of relations between systems, are
conserved in a system or in a set of interacting systems, everything
else becomes open to systemic change around what is conserved in the
history of the individual system, or in the history of the interacting
systems. So, when living in language, and particularly in oral
languaging, began to be systemically conserved generation after
generation through the learning of the children as a manner of living,
some three million years ago in some of the ancestral families of the
primate lineage to which we belong, everything else became open to
change around the conservation of living in language. Or, in other
words, as living in language, and particularly in oral languaging,
began to be conserved generation after generation in our ancestors,
our human lineage began in a process of change that shaped our whole
body (nervous system, face, larynx, manner of relation, the world
lived) around living in oral language. Finally, language is not a
domain of abstractions or symbols, it is a concrete domain of
coordinations of coordinations of concrete doings, and symbols and
abstractions are secondary to language. In these circumstances, we
humans are not only languaging animals, but we exist in languaging,
and we disappear as humans if language disappears. That is, it happens
that we are in language not that we use language, that our being in
language is our manner of existence as the kind of animals that we are
as humans, and that our psychic existence includes the relational
dimensions of our languaging being.
Finally, a few words about emotions. What we distinguish in daily life
as we distinguish emotions are kinds of relational behaviors, not
particular doings. And what we connote biologically as we speak of
emotions referring to ourselves or to other animals, are body dynamic
dispositions (involving the nervous system and the whole body) that
determine what we or they can do or not do, in what relations we or
they can enter or not enter, at any moment. As a result, different
emotions can be fully characterized as different domains of relational
behaviors or as dynamic body dispositions for relational behaviors.
For example, love is the domain of those behaviours or dynamic body
dispositions through which another arises as a legitimate other in
coexistence with oneself, aggression is the domain of those behaviors
or dynamic body dispositions through which another is denied as a
legitimate other in coexistence with oneself, and fear is the domain
of those behaviors or dynamic body dispositions through which one
moves away from the cicumstances in which one finds oneself. In these
circumstances, love is not a virtue, or something special, it simply
is a biological phenomenon as the domain of those behaviors through
which social life arises and is conserved; it is simply the biological
dynamics that constitutes trust and mutual acceptance in body and
spiritual relations of nearness and intimacy. B) A child learns his or
her body of the other in the relations of free play and total trust in
body acceptance with his or her mother. This has been shown by one of
us, Dra. Gerda Verden-Zoller, in her work with mothers and children of
families in the Bavarian Forest area during the last fifteen years.
Furthermore, in her work, Dra Verden-Zoller has shown that a child
also acquires self and social awareness in his or her relations of
play with his or her mother, and develops the whole world he he or she
lives as an expansion of his or her bodyhood. Let me summarize some
basic elements of the findings of Dra. VerdenZoller. 1. The structure
of a child, its body, its nervous system, its immune system ...., its
whole bodyhood, changes following a course according to the life that
it happens to live.
snip
We humans are languaging animals, that is, we live in language as a
manner of flowing in coexistence in consensual cordinations of
consensual coordinations of behaviors. This manner of living must have
arisen in the history that gave origin to us some three million years
ago. This we said already. At the same time, we are loving animals.
Love is a manner of relational behavior through which the other arises
as a legitimate other (as an other that does not need to justify his
or her existence in relation to us) in a relation of coexistence with
onself. Emotions, in general, are manners of relational behavior, and
they take place in our bodyhood dynamics as body dynamics (the nervous
system centrally included of course) that specify at any moment in
what relations we can enter at that moment. Thus, aggression is the
domain of those behaviors through which the other arises denied as a
legitimate other in coexistence with onself.