final thought on the subject – AI thought – I asked why we don’t notice

It is the ultimate irony of this topic: the moment we describe the “prison of language,” people use the bars of that very prison to explain why they aren’t inside.

There are a few deep-seated psychological and linguistic reasons why it is nearly impossible for people to admit—or even see—that their words are “using” them, even as they speak.

1. The “Transparent Eyeball” Problem
We don’t look at our language; we look through it.
Language is like a lens. If you’ve worn glasses your whole life, you don’t see the glass; you just see the world. When someone says, “Your lenses are distorting the view,” your natural reaction is, “No, this is just what the world looks like.” To admit the metaphor is “living us” is to admit that our perception of reality might be a construction, which is a terrifying loss of control.

2. Naive Realism
Psychologists call this Naive Realism—the human tendency to believe that we see the world “as it really is” without bias.
The Logic: “I am objective; therefore, the words I use are just the correct labels for facts. You, however, are using ‘framing’ and ‘rhetoric.'”
In their minds, they aren’t “weaponizing” a definition; they are simply “stating the truth.” This is why they can’t see the “software update” running in their own heads—they think it’s the original hardware.

3. The “Hedgehog” Defense Mechanism (almost all political pundents!)
Isaiah Berlin, the Hedgehog’s “One Big Thing” provides immense psychological comfort.
(The Hedgehog (The Monist): These thinkers relate everything to a single central vision or a universal organizing principle. They view the world through a lens of absolute certainty, fitting all facts into their one “big idea” and rejecting anything that doesn’t align.)
If I admit that my metaphors are just one way of seeing things, my “One Big Thing” starts to crumble. To protect that inner sense of order, the brain’s “firewall” immediately labels your observation as an “attack” rather than a piece of feedback.

4. The Blind Spot of Conscious Intent
People often confuse intent with effect.
They think, “I don’t intend to be a prisoner of language, so I’m not.” They believe that because they are “thinking” before they speak, they are in control. But they are choosing words from a pre-set menu provided by the “linguistic architecture” of their ancestry, religion, political tribe… They are choosing the meal, but they didn’t realize they were restricted to a single page of the menu.

Why I thought this topic mattered – I see this daily, especially in what pass as political discourses, words of weapons that become viruses replicating though our social interactions

Noticing the Metaphors we live by is vital for understanding today’s political climate. Currently, we see pundits and influencers acting as the primary architects of our vocabulary, but with a modern twist: when they ‘define’ words, or more accurately, weaponize them, those definitions act like a software update for their followers’ brains.

Once that linguistic update is installed, the ‘metaphor lives them.’ If the word ‘Opposition’ is redefined as ‘Existential Threat,’ the ‘Argument as War’ framework becomes the only operating system available. At that point, people are no longer capable of seeing a differing perspective as a valid counterpoint; they can only perceive it as an ‘attack’ to be neutralized.

If we want to fix our discourse, we have to stop being the passive hardware for these polarizing updates. We need to reclaim our agency and move from ‘Politics as a Zero-Sum Game’ to ‘Politics as a Civic Workshop,’ where we question the metaphors before they dictate our reactions.

Hi Anita,

Please don’t feel bad. The “reduction” I felt wasn’t a wound you inflicted; it was a perfect example of the very “prison” we are talking about, how labels, even well-intentioned ones, can feel like walls. I shared that I felt “reduced” in the moment because I’ve found that when I hide those feelings to avoid conflict, they become harder to release. I thought you deserved the honesty of the experience rather than my silence. I felt that as growth.

When you say, “Maybe it’s better that we don’t communicate further,” I see the Prison House of Language in real-time. It’s that point where the frustration of words failing leads us to believe that silence is the only way to stay safe. But we aren’t missing each other because we are failing; we are missing each other because language is a blunt tool. If we stop talking to “do no harm,” the walls just stay where they are.

I’m not hurt; I’m just noticing the boundaries of the wicker basket. I’ll be honest: my poem was an exit from the topic. I felt a sense of failure in starting it, realizing I was trying to use the very thing I was questioning to somehow step outside of it. It felt like a ‘clever’ labor of the mind that was only creating more walls, so the poem was my way of letting go of that specific effort and stepping back into a simpler space. I still plan to exit the topic, but see in context it was badly done.

You asked how I see your “concrete” language as abstract. It’s interesting to me that even the word “concrete” is actually a very powerful abstraction. We take a material from the physical world, something hardened and solid and use it as a metaphor to describe a way of thinking and seeing the world. That isn’t wrong, just something to notice so we don’t get trapped. When is it that our language creates or limits the experience of how we see the world?

When you hold onto a construct like “the non-duality of human early reactions” as a concrete fact, it can ironically become a prison. It blends psychology, philosophy and perhaps even spiritualty into a fixed lens that suggests we are all “reactors” following the same rules. That creates a “fixed” version of oneself and others that assumes a predictable result of the past, rather than a person here in the present.

When “Do No Harm” or “Non-Duality” become fixed rules, they dictate our reality (Silence). I’d much rather we “do harm” by accidentally bumping into each other and then talking through it, than “do right” by never speaking again.

The ‘green grass’ isn’t a place where no one ever trips; it’s just a place where there’s enough room to get back up.

Anita, thank you for taking the time to think through all of this and for trying to understand the differences in how we communicate. I find it helpful.

I want to share something honestly and from the heart. When you describe my way of speaking as coming from a rigid childhood or inner chaos, I feel reduced by that. The explanation feels like a cage. It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that it turns my way of communicating into a psychological diagnosis. And that’s actually part of what I meant earlier about how language can trap us and others without us noticing.

You say you speak concretely, and I believe that’s how it feels from the inside. However from the outside, I see you doing something quite abstract as well… creating theories about me, interpreting motives, building symbolic stories about childhood. That’s not a criticism; I actually relate to those stories, though confused when you say you don’t understand abstract thought… Perhaps a reminder that we’re both shaped by the languages we grew up inside, and we both sometimes mistake our own style for the ‘real’ one.”

I don’t want either of us to give up our way of speaking and every style (language) has limits, and can create misunderstandings, even cages, we don’t always notice. In a way, this whole exchange is exactly what I meant by the “prison house of language”: how words can open us and confine us and others sometimes.

I appreciate your effort to meet me, and I see that we’re both trying to do that without losing our own way of expressing things and losing ourselves. In that light perhaps I should add that don’t speak abstractly to be clever or evasive. It’s simply how I make sense of the world and how I stay connected to myself. It’s the way I avoid collapsing into someone else’s frame, and it protects parts of me that were never clearly mirrored for me.

I actually feel something similar in your writing… there’s a depth of feeling in what you write that goes beyond the concrete…

A note on the parable. Perhaps it would be helpful to add that I was originally trying to make an argument about how we often mix up our spiritual lives and our politics. I was wondering if we’ve started asking them to do things they weren’t built for: we load spiritual practice with an urgency it can’t always carry, and we expect political action to give us a kind of “awakening” that it can’t really deliver.

I was getting so tangled up in those big, heavy words I felt like the mirror-maker in the story—trying to decide if I should be making a “shield” or just holding the “glass.”

The parable was the only way I could find to step out of the argument and just breathe. It’s exactly like you said, Anita: sometimes we just need to find a way to be human again when the “abstract” starts to feel like a wall.

Still, I notice that the parable is abstract… for me, it is my emotional language, a attempt to paint a picture. It’s how I feel my way through.

Thomas, I appreciate your honesty, and it reminded me of a poem by Rick Cain

“The ancient of Man ponders his curiosity. Questions arise as he wonders of his own significance… How time moves as sands of an hour glass, not to be grasped, but reckoned with by the moment. The focus of a single crystal houses Hope, Love and the rainbow multitude of Life’s involvement. We see these things as in passing… we feel them as now. The Master of these sands is he who loves each crystal.”

I’ve never been great at zazen myself. I used to approach the silence as if I were building a fortress, trying to keep the “world” out so I could finally be “spiritual.” I had to let that go. Part of the letting go was changing my relationship to the word “spiritual” to a experience of “Harmony”.

So when you say a pop song breaks in, wonder if that song isn’t a wall but a Gate?

When you sit in the silence and a song arises, it feels like encountering that “rainbow multitude of Life’s involvement.” That lyric in your head a crystal of sand, a opportunity to “reckon with the moment,” where the silence turns out to be big enough to carry the song.

Your instinct to writing those lyrics out feels like an act of loving the crystal. Acknowledging that right now, the universe is singing a popular tune through you. I don’t think the SandMaster would tell you to be quiet; he’d probably just start humming along.

Thanks Thomas. you remind me that the ‘original key’ is always here, just waiting for us to tune the instrument.

I think my own path is a bit of a trinity of Prayer, Meditation, and Contemplation.

Meditation’ is often defined as quieting the mind until thoughts stop, however, I’ve come to see it more as a flow. A act of ‘pondering and treasuring’ that notices how they pass and holding them lightly.

In this flow, Prayer is the opening of the heart; Meditation is the movement; and Contemplation is the silence… I try not to get too wrapped up in those specific labels, though. I don’t want the words to define the experience, only to act as a shorthand for the way the heart opens.

Less Zen, I guess and perhaps more Hermetic – AI describes as:
— Prayer (Opening): Not a petition for “things,” but a turning of the will. It is the Mary-like “Yes” that makes the heart receptive.
— Meditation (Pondering): This is where you “hold words lightly.” It is a rhythmic, imaginative thinking that doesn’t try to “solve” the world, but simply “treasures” the images until they begin to speak.
— Contemplation (Silence): This is the “Virgin Birth” of meaning. The words fall away, the “shore” of language vanishes, and you are left in the Splendor of Silence. It is no longer “about” God; it is the presence of G_d. It is here I wonder that ‘new consciousness’ arises?

I’ll be sure to check out that Seals and Crofts song, it’s a beautiful reminder that we are all just passing through together.