ON LOCKE

Upon reading Locke, I always catch myself admiring how modern his theories are. I'm not quite sure anyone could get away with telling intelligent people that they have absolutely, fundamentally, no clue of what they are discussing about with one another even today. The implications run wild when one asserts that language is incredibly unstable, arbitrarily created and enforced, and that practically no one agrees with you on the definitions you have, up until that point in your life, found nothing wrong with. At some point though, and I think it is the fate (the doom) of every rhetorically analytic person, he comes to an impasse. What he believes the perfect, philosophical language should embody is clarity. That clarity is supposed to be rooted in Natural examples and standards. The problem with that, is that anyone could have an extremely emotionally charged reaction to practically anything they've dealt with in their life. I could just see a different shade of yellow than you when we look at the same color simply because I have different genetics. You might point to a tree and state simply that it is dying, death and decay being a natural circumstance in life which is observable, but if I am not a tree scientist I might think it is healthy and prospering just because it has green leaves on it.

So something as supposedly easy as giving a direction ("go east when you see the dying tree") can create an enormous problem. The idea I'm getting at here is that, if you are going to deconstruct language that far, there is no purity or clarity left. Any attempt at clear language Locke makes is based off of his own arbitrary significations about what seems clear and simple to him. What's even worse is that the more complex ideas become, the more difficult it becomes to utilize clear language.

He is not for metaphors but they aren't a lovely game we play with ourselves: they are useful because they help us draw parallels for people who would have no experience in what we are talking about otherwise. Perhaps someone has never eaten grits because they live in the North (and, trust me, I have met just such a person), I tell them it's a breakfast food that is, in consistency, a lot like oatmeal but more salty and less flavorful. I'm not going to take them on a tour of grits, step by step, telling them how it's made and what it's made from and how it's usually prepared because, yes, I could get that involved with it but at some point they would stop listening for lack of caring. Plus, I would have to come up with more and more complicated terms as I approached the manufacturing aspect of it. Can anyone describe what Miracle Whip or margarine is made out of? No, but I can say it's a less flavorful substitute for mayonnaise and butter that people on diets love. Immediately, everyone would understand.  I believe that is a big impasse for Locke; his writings become complicated and convoluted because he's trying so hard to avoid common expressions and tropes.

I also think he puts common language in too inferior a spot. It's true that I suppose in a lot of cases people will get by with understanding a sufficient amount about what the other is trying to say, but I think in many instances it is a mortal danger for common people to allow too many inconsistencies in their dialogues with one another. I believe in many cases, moving someone to action, feeling, and understanding requires leaving things to the other's imagination. When someone screams the word "STOP" at me, I instantly drop everything I'm doing even if I don't perceive the immediate threat they are warning me of. That's important. That's simple; no one is yelling "STOP WALKING IN THAT DIRECTION BECAUSE A FLYING SAUCER IS AIMED DIRECTLY AT YOUR FLESHY HUMAN FACE." Nobody's got time for that. I would be dead by the time they ended their sentence, and my philosophical contemplation about rhetoric would die with me. When someone tells me they love me I need equally as much detail. It isn't necessary for me to have an entire list of all the things I do that make them love me from remembering their favorite flavor Gatorade to being a really supportive friend in their time of need, I generally just understand it to mean all of that. It's true that our concepts of love will be totally different, based off of past relationships, how we were raised, etc. but I think the only way to get over those simple gaps is to get to know another person, to try to empathize with them and understand them from their own point of view. If sensation of the external world is our only decently reliable mechanism for understanding universal truths, then we better not talk to anyone who hasn't had an identical life as us because they will not understand us at all (just kidding, we can just get to know each other and use tropes sometimes).

This is where I start sounding a lot like I.A. Richards so I'm going to end this blog post. Anyone is more than welcome to let me know if I've misunderstood Locke in some way.