by Fenrisco » Sat Sep 17, 2011 6:08 pm
This is why I try to operate in a Chinese-speaking country with only a rudimentary knowledge of the language and, essentially, as a functional illiterate. I don't want to learn any more. It's not without its problems but I get where I'm going. The reason for this is that the mind is like any other computing device - information fed in requires processing cycles to deal with it, figure out whether it's signal or noise, whether you want to or not. I think more clearly here than I ever did in the UK and I put that down to the fact that I do not need to process advertising, TV, so-called "news", soap operas, propaganda, neighbor's chit-chat, and the thousand and one other language-based distractions that prevent most people from focusing on what is important and fundamental. "Stranger in a Strange Land" is actually a tremendously functional perspective, allowing insight that would otherwise be clouded by language data.
So, I put my emotional detachment and calm down not to spiritual enlightenment but to being in a position to bypass the vast quantities of cycle-consuming shite spewed by my fellow man. Although perhaps that is the same thing. I call this the "holiday effect", whereby one travels to a country where one does not speak the language and receives epiphanies caused not so much by the environment itself but by the fact that one can actually listen to one's own thoughts without the madding crowd deafeningly clamoring for attention. That's to say; one attends to realities, not extrapolations.
"Do What Keepeth Thou from Wilting Shall Be the Loophole of The Law"