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communication

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Quotes filed under communication

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I saw a stop sign, and it occurred to me that just as no one expects a stop sign to stop a car, I shouldn__ expect words to substitute for experience. That__ not their job, although words certainly can be misused in that way. The job of words is to direct us toward experience, to round out experience, to facilitate experience, and to give us ways to share at least pale shadows of that experience with those we love. And the job of words is to help us learn to be _ and act _ human.

DJ
Derrick Jensen

Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution

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There__ a larger point to be made here than my own obtuseness, which is the fragility, beauty, and at the same time resilience of any communication. An inchoate impulse forms into a feeling that resembles but can never match the dreamy intensity of the original impulse. This feeling then articulates itself, but the words at best approximate a shadow of the feeling. I speak or write these words, and of course the person who receives them brings to that receiving his or her own connotations: Cinnamon, for example, may conjure different memories and may mean something different for you than for me. These words may then settle into feelings, leading finally, perhaps, to some impulse on your part. With so many layers of interpretation, it's no wonder we so often misunderstand each other. And this is between two people who speak the same language. How much more difficult understanding can be, then, when the people do not share a common cultural background, or native tongue? How much more than this may we misunderstand when we then hear a dog speak, or a tree or stone?

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Nature __ _ has made it impossible for us to have any communication from this earth with the other great bodies of the universe, in our present state; and it is highly possible that he has likewise cut off all communication betwixt the other planets, and betwixt the different systems._ We observe, in all of them, enough to raise our curiosity, but not to satisfy it __ _ It does not appear to be suitable to the wisdom that shines throughout all nature, to suppose that we should see so far, and have our curiosity so much raised __ _ only to be disappointed at the end __ _ This, therefore, naturally leads us to consider our present state as only the dawn or beginning of our existence, and as a state of preparation or probation for farther advancement._

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Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God?

TA
Theodor W. Adorno

Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life