The Feeling IS Mutual

We speak vaguely about feelings because they are often not specific. Think about the way we speak about drugs. We say that drugs make us feel “high”, and this is a good enough explanation for other people to understand. Even though this is hopelessly vague, if another person has been high, he will know what we are talking about. If the person has never been high, there is no way he can relate to the sensation.

Even if we could manufacture highly specific feelings, we could not imagine them without having experienced them. Imagine specific “feeling pills”. You could feel like everyday was a Friday. You could feel how you felt the first time you made love. You could feel like you were taking a leisurely stroll down a quiet tree-lined street. Of course you could only know what these feelings were if you had had them already. And, if you wanted to explain the feeling to someone else, where would you start? Almost everyone has had the “TGIF feeling” but how do you put this feeling into words beyond saying “Thank G-d it’s Friday!””

Life without language would be problematic

Language allows us to express our selves in a certain way that might not otherwise be able to do. It allows us to give accurate instructions without physically demonstrating them. It allows us to quickly and easily tell what happened in a specific scenario. And it helps us to learn from our own mistakes. This is perhaps its greatest function. The oral histories and legends that were passed down through the ages, and then coded in written language, allow us to learn from other mistakes before we make them ourselves.

Advice on how, not what

Too often we try to be helpful to someone else, but we fail to realize that what we are offering is nothing more than stale platitudes. We feel free to offer our ideas on what the person should do, but we make no effort to explain how he should do it. And most of the time people know what they want to do, it is this how that is a mystery.

For example, if you are looking for a job and you ask a friend for advice, she might say something like: you should look at jobs in the tech sector, it is hot right now! This little piece of advice tells you what to do, but do you know how to do it? Where do you find these tech jobs?

A parent tells her child that she should avoid guys who are too aggressive. Solid advice, perhaps, but does the child know how to do that? How does an aggressive guy act? How should she stay away from him, even if she knows he’s aggressive?

Imagination leads perception

One thing that is astonishing about our perceptions is that we trust our imagination so much. We do not even notice the extent to which it trumps our basic senses. We know the world is round, but we do not see it this way. We know the earth is revolving around an axis, but we’ve never felt it. We know that we are orbiting the sun, but we don’t feel like we’re going anywhere.

We put so much faith in this abstract knowledge without realizing that faith is what it is. Any time we believe in something as a cause for what we experience, any time we invent or rely on an explanation, we are making an act of faith.

People like to draw a contrast between science and religion, but they fail to recognize how each of these relies on putting belief ahead of senses. In general, faith guides and senses play catch up, like a horse pulling a cart. For the vast number of people whose imagination leads their senses, seeing is not believing, seeing is verifying what they already know.