Communication

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What is it?

A brief premise. When I was a teen I was very interested to know what was communication. I could not communicate with my mother who was frigid, probably herself autistic, anyhow very self centred and selfish, nor with my father who was very likely AS, though very well functioning in restricted areas. My sister was 5 years older than me and I felt treated by her as a toy, i.e. tyrannically. My family lived in a totally isolated way, so there were not peers, family friends, relatives with whom to ally and find protection.
So this explains very much my interest for communication and for the idea of community, where solidarity of ideas, values and interests could be shared.. All my life and my cultural interests were guided by these needs. I might enter into details but won’t do it here and now.

So I try to give some answer now that I am late in years, but I think I understand a little more about communication since I found the key to my failure, which is probably the same of many of us who contribute to this forums.
First a word of caution and also an attempt at sincerity. Every exchange between persons (verbal or not verbal – it may be also painting or music) has some motivation behind: the baser are perhaps money and reputation or simply a pat on the shoulder, (that is the minimum request in the field of reputation), or the need for affection, the rarest coommodity on the market. Some motivations are more worthwhile some less.

It will be a tentative frame for now.

When you communicate with someone you want to:

Exchange information, like: “take care there is danger around, take cover”, “I will protect you” or “please protect me”, or “the butter is in the fridge” or (among mobs) “the police is around, run!”.

Externalize emotions: “I love you” (whatever that may mean) or “I hate you” (more easy to understand).
Other (I don’t know for now).

Anyhow it’s difficult that, behind any communication (except that about the location of butter) there is usually not some hidden motivation. I don’t want to cite Freud whom I hate and despise.


George Buchner was a great literary figure, who studied medicine and was bound to become a surgeon but ended up to be a great dramatist before dying age 23 in 1837. In his tragedy “The death of Danton” there is this exchange between Danton and his wife Julie: J. “but you love me!” Danton (who had other women incidentally): “Who knows? You are pretty, but we are pachyderms. We should uncover craniums to tell.”

The film “Babel” of the Mexican director Inarritu, now programmed in American big cities, is a great work on the problem of the failure of communication, given the different motivations, life histories and background of the people wanting to let a message through in desperate situations. It’s not entertainment but very thought provoking.
Having not communicated much about communication I will leave it at that for now, perhaps relying on some feedback.

I think that is very good! Before I delved into your explination, I just felt that communication was the expression of thought, but the pool is a bit deeper than that, judging from what you're saying. I still think the pool is shallow, though. Sorry, metaphor use, and I probably stuffed it up, as I always do!

I add something. I am habitual evesdropper, in buses, trains, benchs (benchs particularly), i listen conversations of young kids and teens, especially male and female. I should say that male and females live in different universes, and there is an asymmentry in what they say. Males want to affirm heir superority in informantion, females are more directed at seduction using a consummate exposition of parts of their body, not necessarily naked. Some time they say nothing, but simply listen the male with smiles or grimaces that punctuate and frame what the boy is sayng. I have observed also that the girls of five years know very well, istinctivily,
the right moves in the language of seduction.

Ah yes, eavesdropping! I can enjoy doing this too, and it helps when you have a CD player but you pause it so it just LOOKS like your listening to music!

I've never ecountered the seductive tatics, or at least to my knowledge, and I have very little experience in the game of love (which has an infinite amout of rules to follow and break. Like Monopoly, excpet ten times more confusing).

I found your remark about five year old girls knowing how to be seductive rather disturbing. A little girl of five is not capable of being seductive, since this implies that she is seeking adult male attention. A child of five is basically not interested in sexual attention, unless they have been molested by some older person. Children, however, are capable of imitating behaviors that they've seen in adults.

They use the language of seduction, which they know istinctly, the same way a kitten uses the moves of chasing without wanting to kill and eat their prey. When I was a child I chased my little cat without wanting to kill it and eat it, and it (I would prefer he, after all he/it was a tomcat) chased me without wanting to eat me. It was play. A cat that chases a table-tennis ball doesen't think the ball is a mouse it is going to eat.

Small talk: you do it in the elevators with persons you use to see (in the elevator) if the number of floors is more than three and inferior to ten. What you want to convey is not the information on the weather, but “I am not your enemy, we are civilized persons”. Small talk in this sense flourishes also at table and in parties. When a party falls flat the conversation is all small talk, and it’s a tragedy. But silence also is frightening, so you have to fill it with whatever happens at hand.

when I was five years old, I did not instinctively know anything about seduction. I played with toys, got used to going to school, read books, etc. Again, I don't think children are interested in the complex interactions engaged in by consenting adults. Children are not capable of operating at that level. If an adult thinks this, it can lead to danger for a child, this is a perception that I've seen exhibited by pedophiles and child molesters. (Not that I'm calling you these things). I just think it's an unfounded perception.

I would rather be silent than entertain small talk.

I am convinced that children, cubs, kittens and all animals experiment in play adult behaviours. That doesn’t mean that little girls want to seduce, but that they try the language of seduction as a play, as well as the language of hunting in hide-and-seek doesn’t mean the kid wants do make a meal of his/her pal. The language of seduction is more or less the same in all human communities, in Amazonia, New Guinea, in the Eskimo and in other communities that never were under the cultural influence of the West. Smile is universal in humans and is an instinctive piece of language. The same is true of threatening postures, menacing stares and so on. Anyhow sexual interests begin much before puberty, without the intervention of child molesters.

Communication is definitely a two-way street. There's the communicator but then there also needs to be a recipient, otherwise it's about as useful as talking to a wall. I think communication problems really arise when the communication doesn't occur (the lack of communication can be a nonverbal communication in itself) or when the communication is misunderstood.

If someone is unaware of the nature of their activities than how are they really communicating anything. Looking at people and attributing reasons to their behaviors is making assumptions about their intentions. Just like with hide and seek - it would not have occured to me that this would have anything to do with hunting so I would not be practicing (or even imitating) my hunting skills as a child playing this game. In order to that I would have to have some sort of knowledge - someone could claim to observe that from the outside if that is their perspective but all of that comes too close to psychoanalysis of behaviors to me. I think some people are on a different level and do not have layers of manipulations behind their motivations. Didn't Freud say "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"?. That could be a legend though. I am not comfortable with stuff like this though because I also have had instance when I was a teen where I was supposedly giving off some sort of sexual signals when in fact I was doing no such thing and I was completely oblivious to that.

Let’s set apart for now the problem of signals between children and adults. I think I can make two points. Children have sexual interests and attractions very early in life. Many of their games have sexual overtones in that to chase and to touch each other in play is not devoid of some erotism and perhaps overshadows in motivations the fantasy of “hunting”. Second, play is a complex behaviour in that it presumes the understanding of a message about the message “this is play, is not the serious thing”. Sometimes this “metamessage” gets lost in action and a bite results in a real bite (harming) and the representation of a fight may end up in real fight. Same thing may happen with sex-coloured games. I have often observed mock fights among kittens o puppies cross over into real fights. But the behaviour sequence of mock fights and real fights are inherited not learnt. And the same thing holds for sexual behaviour.

The exchange of information has become awfully important in modern society, as compared to illiterate primitive societies. The importance of being literate is bootlegged as fundamental to be cultured or civilized. In public rhetoric knowing to read and write should give people the chance to draw on the cultural heritage. It doesn’t appear to be so. What is the percentage of the population. who has read Shakespeare or Dante, except for little bits swallowed forcibly at school? How many know the difference between an Edward Hopper and a Picasso. How many have read my beloved Huckelberry Finn or Madame Bovary? Cultural heritage is a very elitarian business and is becoming more and more elitarian even if alphabetization is becoming nearly universal in the West. As a matter of fact, being literate is necessary to fill up forms, reading administrative instructions and technical handbooks, not to enjoy culture. The enjoyment of culture should be enjoyment of a common heritage. This happens now perhaps only with rock happenings. It happened once with folk dance and music in primitive cultures. Emotions are shared and communicated only via elitarian channels in separate, niches in apartheid.

I will leave at that for now, apologize for my lecturing style, but after all have been a (failed) teacher. And can’t refrain from recommending to read Huckelberry Finn.