What do I mean when I say: I think?
It may well be different than what you mean when you use the same words.
And, thus begins the problem with discussing ideas.
To communicate is to transfer meaning. How about an example?
A Baptist who engages a Jehovah's Witness in conversation discovers the startling fact they are using the same words but those same words have DIFFERENT meanings!
When a JW says "the Truth" it specifically means a different set of values, norms and descriptions than the more general usage of a Baptist.
Why?
Is it because they THINK DIFFERENTLY? Or....is it the othe way around?
Do we Think the way we do BECAUSE of the words we've been given containing connotations (meanings) grafted into them?
Each of us came from a different family, background, city, ethnicity, political enviornment and economic setting. Agreed?
When our Mother or caregivers spoke to us there were not only words but implications transferred to us as well.
"Sissy", "Man Up", "nice doggy", "damned cat", "police officer", "cop".....shaped, colored, shifted your values like programming a computer.
How you feel (emotions) follows those words. Words=values=meaning=YOUR WORLD VIEW.
We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way—OUR WORLD VIEW. It is put into us. We learn it. We think with it. It BECOMES the world in our thoughts.
A Quaker child views the world completely differently than a Muslim child living in Iran. A Black child in the 1800's viewed his world completely differently from a white child the same age. Words were spoken to them with dramatically different "meaning", implications, power, threats or information. THEY WERE GIVEN DIFFERENT WORLDS by those words.
The habitual use of words leads to habitual behaviors which follow the implied "reality" of them. One set of words "works" and another set fails.
Consider the following changes to our language. The older set of words and phrases creates one climate of thoughts, feelings and reactions in contrast to the substitute wording:
used car vs previously owned vehicle
Secretary vs Administrative assistant
housewife vs stay at home mom
Stewardess vs Flight Attendant
waiter/waitress vs Server
Garbage removal vs Sanitation Service
Gay marriage vs Same-sex marriage
impotence vs erectile dysfunction
cripple vs special needs
Understanding why you feel the way you do when you THINK can be traced to how you've been programmed by language in your version of the World.
To an Arab child the word: JEW creates contempt, animosity, hostility and negativity largely when that three-letter-word is loaded with those meanings in a religiously hostile enviornment.
To a Jehovah's Witness child the christian CROSS has been labeled as a FALSE symbol merely connoting wrong belief and an instrument of captial punishment by the Romans. But, to most christians, the CROSS creates a feeling of love and gratitude by their Savior who suffered FOR them.
Thinking in words is programming by implied meaning.
Russia's greatest poet is generally regarded to be Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin beautifully and masterfully employed the Russian language to full effect.
Americans cannot read Pushkin's poetry with the same mind, thinking, feeling and interpretation as a Russian reader. Why not? Because, the words are translated by necessity into something.....roughly....equivalent.
Shakespeare, the extraordinary English writer suffers a similar fate when translated into Russian.
Each of us comes from a family who thinks and speaks ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THOUGHTS using the same language as another family!
Imagine how different parts of the world employ our words with astoundingly different meanings!
