Personal,

 

People want to be free individuals, yet they get all upset and wimpy, when things get personal. We finally get personal, when we have Embodied Language (EL), as we admit, we have, unknowingly, been hiding in our impersonal, automatic, ineffective, coercive, unrealistic, dissociative Disembodied Language (DL). During DL, we only pretend things aren’t personal, but, of course, they always are, since we, each, experience, as individuals, our own reality, which is based on the inevitable consequences of our own behavioral repertoire.

 

Obviously, we all have a personal life, but in our unconscious DL, we can’t talk about it, because we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak. As a consequence, our language in DL doesn’t fit with our experience. In EL, by contrast, we are always personal, because we listen to ourselves while we speak. In EL, there is a perfect match, congruence, alignment, between what we say and how we say it, as our language describes our experience, correctly. Oddly, in DL, we say someone is taking things too personal, because he or she actually describes correctly, that he or she is affected by what has been said. Therefore, whenever people say, don’t take it personal, they actually say, don’t have EL, but have DL!

 

It is not an exaggeration to say, that during DL, we are all, unknowingly, constantly, attacking each other. Since we don’t listen to ourselves, while we speak, we inadvertently, dominate the listener, while we struggle with other speakers, to get the listener’s or the audience’s attention. During our habitual DL, speakers always sound demanding, as only a few people can win the struggle for the attention, due to which other speakers are reduced to listeners, who, at best, only sometimes may say something about what the so-called powerful, victorious, presumably important, speaker allows them to say. Since the struggle for attention is the reality of DL, speakers are adversaries, who so to speak, try to blow holes in each other’s arguments. Also, whenever we say, don’t take it personal, we tell others not to feel, not to be offended, not to be negatively affected – by something that was said or done – at an imaginary personal level.

 

The plain and simple truth, which we can only acknowledge, during our ongoing EL, is that whenever we talk with one another, we are always – personally – positively or negatively affected. However, during our usual, insensitive, mechanical, effortful DL, we cannot talk about this, because there is no possibility for the listener, who is not the speaker, to become the speaker – to take turns with the speaker – and to provide feedback, by saying, hey speaker, it is not what you say, but how you say it. In other words, there is no attunement to each other, because DL is always my way or the highway.

 

During ongoing EL, we speak about and realize, to our amazement, there absolutely doesn’t exist any inner language or private speech and therefore, there is nothing what we imagine to be experiencing on a personal level. Certainly, there is what we are able to say or what we are unable to say, what we are allowed to say or what we are not allowed to say, but in EL, we are always able to say, what we are willing to say and what we are capable of saying. Yes, during ongoing EL, we feel safe, open and at ease, but during our common DL, we feel threatened, defensive, secretive, manipulative, which creates the illusion of inner speech, mind or thought, of language within our own skin.

 

When people say: don’t take it personal, it’s just business, they say something about language as phenomenon, which, supposedly, excludes you. However, language always affects you, even if, due to your common, unnatural DL, you have remained incapable and unskillful of putting your finger on what that effect is. You could also say, presumably, in a kindlier fashion: don’t beat yourself up over what was just said. However, this still incorrectly refers to what we are doing, personally, supposedly, to ourselves, with inaudible, fantasized, so-called private speech. By the way, in DL, we are always critical and judgmental about ourselves, since nothing of what we say about ourselves is actually true. As a result, we are chronically dissatisfied about ourselves.  

 

In EL, we don’t say dismissive, hurtful or nasty things, but in argumentative, stressful, competitive DL, we constantly, unknowingly, say something to put ourselves above others and to put others down. DL is hierarchical, but EL is heterarchical, which means, someone is more important than you. In DL and you are not important to yourself, but in EL, we are in touch with ourselves. DL is impersonal, but EL is personal. Since we don’t know about the difference between DL and EL, we are stuck with DL, with which we cannot be personal. Our relationships are as conflicted and troubled as they are, due to our DL, which we have never been able to stop, so we could have ongoing EL. 

 

In closing, I want to express my personal view about science. Presumably, personal opinions don’t matter, because our subjective beliefs are considered to be a stand-in-the-way to scientific objectivity. However, this impersonal, inhuman view derives from DL, in which we, as speakers, don’t listen to ourselves. Science has, tragically, but inevitably, due to our ubiquitous DL, historically, always over-emphasized the importance of written language, but it has underestimated and ignored the great relevance of and the urgent need for scientific spoken language, which is EL. Science with its strict rules and calculations, is meant to be impersonal and unbiased. What everyone, who has had some education, should know by now, however, is there is no such a thing as impersonal or unbiased science. While scientists have made great strides towards objectivity, there are still areas where it can be improved. Our spoken language, specifically, our DL, is the elephant in the scientific room.