Be the Weaver of Your Context

This is the blog post associated with the workshop I taught at a secret location in the Colorado Rocky Mountains the weekend of July 16-17. The video was published on the Meaning Is Alive Youtube Channel and can be viewed here.

What we are is beyond description. And yet the way that we are able to weave a story about what we are through language is not something to be so easily dismissed. It seems to me that people are very often engaged in telling stories or listening to the stories that others tell them. Each word, concept, image, experience, can be interpreted in so many different ways, and yet there seems to be a tendency among people to habitually interpret things in the same way so as to provide greater facility in navigating their lives--creating what I think of as thought-patterns. These thought-patterns are often systematic, and even more often, deeply integrated into the general workings of the mind, but perhaps the most pattern-like aspect of them is that they are recurring. One such pattern is "identity" or "self-concept" a useful tool that allows one mind to connect to others through common language-games, yet also a conceptual binding that locks minds into separate boxes, at times barring us from true connection and limiting the means by which one might conduct oneself.

What I think is the starting place of a lot of folk's troubles, is when one of these habitual chains of conceptual identification--an identity (which is really a type of story)--is assumed to be a default mode of being. What I mean by this is quite simply that I see people, who exist in a space of indefinable wonder, wrapping themselves up in a conceptual pattern that they don't ever look beyond. (This is not an understatement either--some people go their whole lives thinking of themselves as "man," "woman," "troublemaker," "saint," "fool," "genius," etc., and take these identities with them to their graves). When a mind holds an identity so close as to think of it as its essence, it blinds itself to different ways of experiencing life. How many fruitful possibilities have been lost this way? In the effort to define oneself, one runs the risk of reducing oneself to a definition. Supposing being-in-itself cannot be defined, this sounds like quite the slippery bind (I offer an oxymoronic name for an oxymoronic struggle).

Identity, as I said, is just one of these habitual thought patterns. The network of associated thought-patterns in which we anchor our interpretation of reality forms the background for all meaning. In other words, meaning takes place within a context.

"Context" comes from Latin "contextus," "a joining together," originally past participle of contexere "to weave together,"which is itself derived from Proto-Indo-European "com," "with, together" + texere "to weave, to make" (from the root *teks- "to weave," also "to fabricate"). When we use the word "context" today, we tend to think of it as something that we find ourselves in, rather than something we create. For example we might say that "in the context of our society, raising your middle finger at someone is a rude gesture," or "in the context of familial relations, a kiss is a simple expression of affection, whereas in the context of relating to people outside of the family, a kiss almost always has romantic implications." I could go on with examples, but what I am illustrating is the way that the meaning of a sign changes depending on the context wherein it occurs. Yet we don't tend to think about the significance of context itself, or how it changes.

The semiotic view of life is one where we acknowledge the creative role that we as interpreters of meaning play in laying forth the context we find ourselves in (or rather, that we weave ourselves into). We ask not only what does such-and-such thought or thought-pattern mean, but what is the significance of the very context within which its meaning takes place? This interplay of meaning and context takes place at many levels, including the individual level, the societal level, and as some theorists (including myself) would postulate, at a biological level.¹

In this workshop I will focus on this way of thinking: that we have the ability to modify our context, and we will see how this affects the life of meaning.

Say, for example, that someone were to seek education about their nation's history, and fit it into the broader context of world history. One then has the option to reflect upon one's life as it is situated in one or both of these contexts. One can see how they are related, but also how they seem to be nested in each other, such that if one is aware of the history of one's own nation but ignorant of world history, one would view their entire context differently than if they had the additional knowledge. History is indeed a particular recounting of past events, so the author of the historical texts or the teacher who introduces these ideas will shape what they mean to the student. It is quite different to learn about the history of music than it is to learn about the history of literature, yet learning about both may help one understand either subset in new and more comprehensive ways. Reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States makes for a much different version of US history than reading a textbook issued by the Texas Board of Education. What I want you most especially to notice in this example is how as we learn about history (by one way or another), the text we study becomes the center of our world of signification, as we work to understand and interpret the information being presented to us. But once we move on with our lives and focus on other things, the history we studied falls into the general context within which we operate.

Notice also that "learning" about history is not just being filled with "facts." What happens when we learn history is that we are confronted with a version of events that we must then, if we wish to relate it to ourselves in a meaningful way, interpret and situate in our lives. We do semiotics when we learn history, whether we are aware of it or not. But then at a certain point, the mind has done such a good job of integrating the history that it assumes the history it has accepted as the context in which it operates. You, your neighbor, and a person across the sea, may all have very different interpretations of history. Even you and your classmate who learned from the same texts presented by the same professor may have different interpretations. We often think of all of us as operating within one unified historical context--but what exactly is that context? It seems that it depends on what it means to you, and the "history" we know is exactly what the word's etymology implies: "an account or narrative." History implies a witness who gives an account what they have seen.

I could dig much deeper into this example, but I just used history here to exemplify a system of signs that we have all integrated into our lives, that we had to actively engage with before it was truly integrated as a context. When we learn about events or ideas we did not yet know of, or when we read different interpretations of those events, that context (which is in this example our knowledge of history) changes. In both cases, what changes actually is the significance to us of the events that we are systematically relating, including the very way we relate ourselves to those events.

Now let's step away from the example of history. Think of what else in your life you would consider contextual. You might say I do so-and-so and such-and-such as a human, as this-or-that gender (or lack thereof), in this-or-that society, in this-or-that time and place in history. We take on roles, we take on identities, we take on obligations, that are shaped or rather delimited by a context. In this workshop we'll talk about context as "the weaving together," the "fabrication," which is initially what the word came from. Think of each of our contexts as colorful quilts with intricate patterns of our weaving. And altogether we are wrapped in a vast quilt of meaning that is co-created. I would go so far as to say that "finding ourselves" suddenly in a context is an illusion, as the context has always been created by us.

Suppose you wake up in a dream, and in that dream you are somewhere that you are sure you have seen before, and there are people that you think you recognize but their faces are changing. But you think you know who they are. And as you do what you are doing, you are aware that you are doing it, and you are aware what it is that you are doing. But you don't quite remember how you got there, you're not sure how you met those people, and you don't remember why you started doing what you're doing. What happens in that dream when you start to ask yourself: "How did I get here?" "Who are these people really?" "How did we end up doing this?" Such a shift of consciousness leads you to start lucid-dreaming. When this happens to me, I suddenly start to realize that I can shape the reality around me and go where I want to go. I think something similar happens when we start to ask similar questions about what we are doing here, in the conscious state we find ourselves in now.

Do you remember what you were doing before you got here? And five years before that? And all the way back to when you were born, do you remember what happened before that? At a certain point, it seems unanswerable. What if you had lifetimes before this one that you could remember so clearly, could you think back to the beginning of the first life and remember that? It seems to me that far enough back, there is not so much difference between a dream and a reality, because in either case, you wound up there without knowing what you were doing before. Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? Who is going to be the one to answer those questions? Who is the one who wove together this beautiful textile of our lives? Who is doing the weaving right now? I am not putting ideas into you, I am just saying words and you are interpreting these words and relating them to a myriad of other ideas in your life. At a certain point I find myself asking... am I a dreamer in a dream, or am I a dream dreaming a dreamer? Is there really a difference?

---

1 The way I am using the word "context" is similar in a number of ways to the use of the coinage "Umwelt" by Thomas Sebeok and other semiotic theorists, but I do think it carries some different connotations. For the sake of this distinction and because I do not intend to be overly technical with this workshop, I will stick to talking about things in terms of "context." I encourage those who are particularly interested in the semiotic theory that inspires my work to do some research on the idea of Umwelt and the theorists who frequently use it.^↩

Review and Reflection: Animal Empathy Empowerment Workshop

In October of 2019, I spent a few weeks volunteering as a teacher at Heaven Hill Academy in Gaunshahar, Nepal. During this time, I taught children from the local villages in their English, Math, and Science classes. I also spent a good amount of time facilitating the library hours, where we would read to the children and facilitate art projects.

While I was staying in the village, I noticed that many of the locals treat animals pretty poorly. There are a number of homeless dogs in the area who are dirty, hungry, and sad. It is not uncommon for people in these rural communities to beat their animals and throw rocks at strays. I quickly realized that the kids aren't going to learn how to respect animals from their parents. On the other hand, these kids are very affectionate and create social connections effortlessly. I knew that they had the capacity in their hearts to expand their prevailing attitudes of kindness and inclusion to animals, if they could just make the cognitive connection.

I sought a way to teach them about being kind and respectful to animals, but since these are very young kids, many of whom are not very advanced in their English speaking skills, I had to get creative.

Tihar was coming up in a few days. It is a festival where on the first few days we give puja to animals to thank them for what they do for us. Flower necklaces are draped around the necks of the revered animals, tikka are placed on their foreheads, and they are offered yummy foods. I saw this as a great opportunity to offer the children an exercise where they could connect the good things we do for animals on Tihar with ways we can treat them all year long. For most people in Nepal, especially in rural areas, Tihar is the only day when they really show kindness and love to animals. But it is not so hard to be kind to animals for the remaining days of the year, if one can only learn to value this conduct. How do we instill values of compassion and respect towards animals in children who are not taught this by their society?

I came up with a Semiotics workshop for kids, which I called Animal Empathy Empowerment. Using simple language, I created a format where I ask questions to the children about how they like to be treated and how they don't like to be treated. By showing them that animals have many of the same preferences and emotions that we do, the goal was to empower the kids to be better able to relate to animals.

The biggest challenge wasn't so much to find the right English words, as most of these children are at least fluent in English. Rather, the challenge was to get the kids to pay attention and absorb the lesson. Their attention spans are so limited that even getting continuous focus for 5 minutes is an accomplishment. My idea was to incorporate an art activity of making Tihar masks of their favorite animals. While the kids were working on their masks, I asked them the questions I had framed to help them develop empathy towards animals. 

Empathy Questions

-First I asked the kids to imagine being a dog or a cat. 

-Asking do you like treats and pets? The answer is universally "yes." Do you like to have your hair pulled or have rocks thrown at you?? The answer is universally "no."

- Then from their human perspective, I asked, do you like to be hungry and alone? Do you like to have good food and be with friends and family? Again the answers are what we'd expect.

-I asked them about their lives as humans, next: "Have you ever been hungry and there is nothing to eat? How does it feel when someone shares food with you?" "Have you ever had a lot of food, enough to share with friends? How does it feel when you share the food with your friends?" 

Community among people is very important in Nepal, and by utilizing this solid experience kids have of being shown kindness by/showing kindness to others, I was able to get them to see that this same kindness can make animals happy too. Animals get hungry just like them, and animals want love just like them.

Dog Body Language

For the older classes, I took time to share my knowledge of dog communication and body language. There are some universal signals that dogs show to communicate how they are feeling, and we as humans can reciprocate these signals to better connect with animals and make them more comfortable.

-Dogs turn their heads when they don't want conflict. They turn their backs when they want to be less threatening. They roll on their backs and show their bellies when they are submissive.

-Dogs stare, raise their hackles, and growl when they are telling you to stay away. They snarl and show their teeth when they are warning that they will bite if you don't back off.

-To help the kids get this, I got on all fours with them and showed these dog body language cues, inviting the kids to imitate me. Playing pretend with the kids for educational purposes was not only fun for all of us, but proved an effective way to integrate participation.

-I made sure to be very clear to the kids that they should not approach a strange dog that they do not know. I suggested that if they know a local dog who is friendly, or especially if they have a family pet, that they can watch how the dog uses these body language cues, and try to use the friendly cues to "talk" to the dogs. I also told the kids to not growl, stare into the eyes, or show their teeth at dogs, even familiar ones.

Teaching the Workshop

I had a few different trials of this workshop with kids in 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and 5th grade. I found that the younger students had no interest at all in responding to my questions. (To be fair, younger students at this school seldom responded to any English, regardless of the context. Generally, I really only noticed responsiveness to the volunteers from students in 4th grade or higher.) As such, I was prepared for the frustration of failing to get across to these younger groups. Trial and error is an important part of experimental learning, and at the very least, we had a fun art project and the students were very excited about their new masks that they were ready to show off to all their friends.

A happy 2nd grader shows off his dog mask.

I tried to get the students to make only Tihar animals (dogs, crows, or cows), but this girl would not be satisfied unless she could make a butterfly! It's so hard to say no to their cute little faces.

2nd graders showing off their beautiful masks!

I was almost ready to throw in the towel after the younger groups, but I had high hopes for the 5th graders. The students in my 5th grade class were rather precocious and creative, and they were most receptive to me out of all the students I had worked with. They were also a bit demanding, and insisted that they make their own style of mask. I said "alright, but let's talk about the animals and Tihar while we make our masks." We had a deal.

I was quite overjoyed when I found them responding to every single one of my questions. I could see them thinking about their answers as I posed them. Even this class can be difficult to control during their library time, but I found that working on the masks while I conducted the workshop helped them to be more relaxed and focused. I can't describe how happy I felt when I was able to get through all of the questions I had set up and still had time leftover. I let them know that I was so very happy with them for giving me their attention and listening.

To my welcome surprise, the 5th graders were so interested in my animal empathy thought-exercises that they started asking their own questions about how to interact with their animals. One student talked about her family pet and how it loves to get treats. Another student was asking me about things his dog did at home after I had gone over the dog body language exercises. These kids expressed to me that they truly do value when the animals that are close to them are happy. I truly believe that this workshop helped them to understand that their most basic emotions and desires are not so different from those of the animals they encounter every day.

Sohan was very proud of his mask.

Parvati (left) and Samita (right).

These two were the sharpest in the class!

The 5th graders pose together with their finished art projects.

 Concluding Thoughts

I was pleased that with older students, this workshop was a huge success. I learned from this experience that a Semiotics workshop is indeed possible with children at a 5th-grade level or higher, but maybe is a bit too much for very young children. If I were to try a workshop like this one at home, I would probably target kids between 4th grade and 8th grade. If I were to work with high-schoolers, I might try something a bit more advanced. I would be interested to see how an Animal Empathy Empowerment workshop functions with students who speak English as a first language. Not everyone gets a chance to consider how to relate respectfully and compassionately with animals, so this would be a good activity for any school in America where we often have students from many different backgrounds all in the same class. I also discovered that when working with kids, including art has a positive effect on their focus and engagement. I anticipate that art will be a key element in any other Semiotics workshops I create for children in the future.

Faith

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

The future exists only in our imaginations. Despite our best predictive efforts, we cannot truly know what the quality of the next moment will be. There is no actual future, thus future circumstances can be neither true nor false. This is where faith comes in.

Have you ever heard someone suggest to you that the way you think creates your world? Perhaps this idea is an important part of your life, or perhaps it is new to you and you are just now reading about it for the first time. Often referred to as the Law of Attraction, the idea is that you will attract into your reality the kinds of things that you focus on in your thoughts. While there is a great deal more nuance to this than one might first suppose, the basic gist of it is that if you focus on the unpleasant things, the struggle and strife, then your life will be full of struggle and strife. If you stay focused on the glorious and beautiful things, your life will be a thing of great beauty. Now, in this post, I am not going to go in-depth into analyzing this theory, but it is certainly not lacking in basis. The workshops I teach go more into its application, and you can read an entry where I explore the mechanics of the power of conscious direction of thought here. My reason for bringing it up now is to suggest that there is an artistry to our conscious experience in this world. The way we think about things is indeed important, and it has repercussions. The Buddha contemplates this when in the Dvedhavitakka he says, "Whatever you frequently think and ponder upon, that will become the inclination of your mind."

The type of thinking I am going to explore here can be expressed as a set of questions: What happens when we have the sense that our future is secure? What happens when we tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason? What happens when we say we are exactly where we are meant to be at this moment? What happens when we have faith?

When I was a student in a Tae Kwon Do dojo, I considered becoming an instructor at one point. Our master once told those of us assembled in an instructor training course that from his perspective, having us be responsible for teaching newer students is like taking a gamble--except the dice are loaded because he knows who we are. He knew the deck he was playing with. Thus, he said, it is not actually a gamble, because it is not left to pure chance.

In the modern way of speaking, faith is typically defined as "complete confidence or trust in something for which there is no proof or evidence." An interesting thing about faith is that while it is a disposition situated in the present, faith also regards the future. The thing about the future is that it is not a thing that we have any evidence for, since it is not a thing that has happened. The root of the word "faith" comes from the Proto-Indo-European "*bheidh," which means "to trust, confide, persuade." Faith is indeed a kind of trusting. That sense of "trusting" is what people have in mind when they say to "have faith in yourself." The greatest faith is a pervasive faith, which trusts in everything. Faith is not necessarily involved with religion, and in fact, an atheist could participate in faith just as well as a devout fundamentalist. Atheism and fundamentalism are both examples of beliefs, and faith is quite a different thing from belief.

I think it would be apt to differentiate faith from belief, as nowadays faith is often associated with belief, even though this is not a necessary association. Belief is an acceptance that something is true. If we look at the etymology of the word "belief," we find it is connected, through Old High German "*galaub," meaning "dear, esteemed," to the Proto-Indo-European root "*leubh," which means "to care, desire, love." It looks like this very old concept out of which our word "belief" evolved still has some relevance today; for indeed, if you look at the intense reaction most people have when their beliefs come into question, it seems quite apparent that they hold these beliefs in very high esteem. Many of us are attached to our beliefs--especially the deep-seated ones.

It looks like while faith and belief both have something to do with trust, they differ in their implications. Belief is trust or confidence that things are a certain way--it is confidence in the truth of a proposition. Faith, on the other hand, is trusting in the way things are, and thus, in the way things will go, and it has nothing to do with what is true or false. But there does seem to be something of love in both faith and belief, for a key feature of love is the way in which it accepts the beloved. The believer fully accepts as true the subject of the belief. The acceptance of the faithful is not necessarily in regard to what is true or false. Faith accepts the unknowable forthcoming future. There is a place for both faith and belief in our lives, but I find that faith is a much more profound and enlightening thing to engage with. Indeed, faith is itself lighter by nature, because it is open to all of possibility. A lover must by definition have a beloved: and so, we might identify the beloved of the believer as truth. The beloved of the faithful is fate. Belief is a singular and focused "yes" to a claim that something is true. Faith is an open and universal "Yes" to life--a life which incudes fate. Love of fate, amor fati, is the disposition Nietzsche reflects about in the quote with which I open this post. (Nietzsche is not talking about faith in the above quote, but it seems to me that his attitude was faithful when writing it.) Faith is not a belief in things being a certain way; but rather, it is a sense of things playing out in a perfect way.

John Vervaeke, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, seems to agree with me insofar as defining faith as a sense of things, rooted in the present, which regards the future. In his lecture series, "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis", he says, "In ancient israel, faith didn't mean "believing ridiculous things for which there is no evidence. That is a recent idea. That is not what it meant"..."Faith was your sense that you're in this reciprocal realization--you're in course. You're on course. You're involved and evolving with things. It's your sense [sic] 'ah! I'm on course', or even 'ah! this is the turning point! I know what to do! I know who I need to change in to. I know how to turn myself in things.''" I think the way he describes it brings some nice clarity, as the word is indeed nowadays often bogged down by associations with religion and belief that take away from its real value and significance. When you say that "everything happens for a reason," you are agreeing to participate in a reciprocal realization. You are accepting that each moment offers an opportunity to evolve into the person you are. The idea of being on course is an acknowledgement of the inevitability of becoming.

Our capability of predicting the future is entirely based on our knowledge in the present. The place we find ourselves now is a product of fate and our concerted efforts. Intentions develop into actions, and actions are a part of our reality--but not the whole of it. However much we may know of what cards are in the deck, there still remains the unknowable nature of the hand that is dealt. There are those who believe that a supreme being is dealing these cards, there are those who believe that these cards are dealt entirely at random, and there is a whole spectrum of people believing something in-between. Faith is a sense that the hand that we will be dealt is the hand that is right for us, whoever or whatever the dealer may be. As I have indicated above, faith is closely intertwined with fate. Our fate is the lot we are dealt. The fact that you were born where you were born, and that you cannot change that fact, is an example of fate.

The current usage of the word fate denotes "the development of events outside a person's control." Fate is often associated with a supernatural power or entity, such as God or gods. But whether you believe in God or not, what is true is that there is some aspect of our lives that we do not have any control over. This is our fate. The etymology of the word "fate" is really quite fascinating. From Latin "fata" we find the meaning of "one's lot or destiny." Yet this is a modification of an older and more pure Latin word, "fatum," which is a "prophetic declaration of what must be," and in a literal sense, "a thing spoken by the gods." The farthest back we can trace the meaning of this word is to the Proto-Indo-European root "*bha," which means "to speak." The association often made nowadays between fate and "the will of God" is not a new one, and it seems to me that it is no coincidence--all we need to do to see this is look past the Latin to the older Greek language. Homer, when writing about fate, at times associated it with the work of the gods. The ancient greek word "μόρος" (pronounced "moros"), that we translate as fate, came from the word "μείρομαι" ("pronounced "meíromai"), meaning "to receive as one's portion." μόρος also can be translated as "death," which has been seen since time immemorial as the inescapable fate of every mortal being. In Hesiod's mythology, Moros is the brother of the three Fates. The New Testament was written by Greeks, and surely its authors were influenced by earlier Greek cultural ideas connecting fate with the work of the divine when they conceived of things as being part of some sort of divine order. The first line of the Gospel according to John in the New Testament goes "In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

And yet, as a word may be spoken by "God," so may we speak a word in response. If someone does not like the place they were born, they can typically move somewhere else. If someone does not like the name they were given, they can typically change their name. But someone falling off of a cliffside probably cannot stop falling in mid-air and choose to start floating up instead--at least not in any normal circumstances. The response that accepts the uncontrollable is faith. Now this is not to say that faith is rolling over and accepting all that may come. For we have a great deal of power and influence over the present. Faith is not giving up all power; but rather, it is the disposition where, upon recognizing the limits of our vast power, we keep our eyes open and smile. Que sera, sera: What will be, will be.

Trust and confidence ought not to be given foolishly, but with an awareness of what is. When trusting in this way, the greater our awareness of the present, the greater becomes our faith, and the greater becomes the power behind it. In this same vein, when my Tae Kwon Do Master trusted in us, this faith of his was well-placed, because he knew that in which he was trusting. I may not have gone on to be a Tae Kwon Do instructor, but my master's words have stuck with me to this day. One might say I was meant to be there.

It is a curious proposition to say "I am exactly where I am meant to be right now," and yet saying such a thing with sincerity can provoke a deep feeling of serenity. When saying something was meant to happen, or things are the way they should be, it need not be thought of as a literal statement of fact or belief. Rather, such a statement expresses a feeling of faith. When faced with reality, we can certainly act within our capabilities to move things in the direction we seek, but even in exerting our will, it is still possible to do so with the faithful disposition. 

Often, I have heard the advice to have hope for the future, and I think it would be helpful right now to distinguish between hope and faith. After all, they both seem like positive outlooks, and yet they have very different implications. Hope looks to the future, and stays focused on it. It is a "trust that things will be so." Hope anticipates the hand of cards and says, "please let it be a royal flush." Hope may have some influence on our attitudes and lifestyes, but it is a mere echo of true faith, which, rooted in the present, has much more bearing on what happens now. Hope always sets us up for disappointment--however unknowable may be the potential as to whether disappointment will or will not come--because the nature of any kind of future expectation is that the ensuing reality tends to differ from it. Faith, on the other hand, protects us from disappointment, because it is an attitude that embraces what comes, whatever that may be.

Faith is one of the most powerful things we can have in our lives, because it supports a framework of reality that empowers positive creation. Hope can make us unhinged, because it looks to the future and wishes for things to be a certain way. In its yearning, hope has a propensity to cause us to be attached to possible future outcomes. Faith, on the other hand, rests in the present and senses that everything will work out the way it is meant to, and its effect is thus the opposite of attachment: true faith is letting go.

I think this attitude of letting go in the face of an unknowable future is why people often use the metaphor of "taking a leap of faith." (Artwork is "Leap of Faith" by Victor Bregeda.)

When we have faith, we become more powerful, because even the most devastating of life circumstances can be interpreted as a part of the constant unfolding of a universe that is just as it is. Think about if you were to make a major change in your life, such as a change in your career path, or asking someone to start dating. Of course, you don't know how things will go. What does it feel like if you hope things will work out? What does it feel like if you have faith that things will work out? The choices we make in how we think about things make a difference.

While hope depends on the illusion of time, (and is thus itself an illusion), through faith we can actually be freed from the bonds of temporality; because by being in faith, we no longer worry about controlling an illusory future. Now, I am not going to say we should never indulge in hope, nor do I think that hope is without its benefits. But I find hope to be dramatically inferior to faith. Hope makes a difference, but faith makes a radical difference.

Faith is not without its risks. Blind faith can be as bad as hubris. Blind faith is the extreme of putting all of one's power in the hands of fate. Hubris is the extreme of trying to change one's fate. To follow the falling off a cliff example from earlier: an example of blind faith is letting yourself go over a cliff that you could have avoided by correcting your course, because you have faith that you will fall in the way that is best for you, even if that proves to be fatal. An example of hubris is jumping off the avoidable cliff because you think you can overcome gravity by sheer force of will.

I think, rather than leaping off of a cliff, a better metaphor for engaging in faith is a dancer who trusts that their body will know what to do in the next moment. (Artwork is "Faith" by Marie Frances.)

While it is good to have a mentality that seeks to surpass limitations, when taken to an excess, this mentality can prove rather unhealthy indeed. Similarly, faith, when well-placed, is life-changing and quite liberating, but when taken to excess, can lead to unreasonable decisions.

When you say "everything happens for a reason," whether the reason was preordained by a supernatural entity or is a reason that you came up with on your own, this statement is an expression of faith. The novice faithful will need to take some effort to find the reason in certain events, especially the traumatic or unwanted ones. Those experienced in faith will see the reasons as a second nature. When truly faithful, we can be fully open to the lessons that the universe offers for us to learn, even in the most trying of times. Faith allows us to pull out of the pattern of defining circumstances as good or bad, and by breaking this cycle, we can free ourselves up to breathe new life into the reality we face. When trouble comes around, or a mighty task that demands a great deal of responsibility leers around the corner, the attitude we have is important. We can so easily give in to frustration and even despair, but what we don't often evaluate is if that kind of thinking is something we have made into a habit. I find that having faith is a much more effective and empowering train of thought to get into the habit of. It is the truly faithful who "walk with God," and to them may inspiration most readily come.

May we not roll over and be beaten about by the waves of destiny like a limp and feckless clump of seaweed. Yet let us also not struggle in vain against an overpowering current, spending all of our energy in a pointless battle. No--let us instead ride upon the waves, borne by a plank as solid as our deep-seated love. Let us ride above the current--yet ride it still with a mind to its incomprehensible power--and in this balanced dance of giving in and pushing out, we may find that space to breathe and say "Yes" to the infinity of possiblity, the reality of the world where we stand, and our boundless potential for creativity within it. Let this be our sacred "Yes."

Neglect, Choices, Elegance

What does it mean to neglect something? It comes from the Latin word neclegere, which in a literal sense means not to pick something up. To not pick something up is to leave it lying there. In the sense in which we use "neglect" nowadays, we mean something along the lines of "to be indifferent to," "to disregard." That which is neglected is something that one doesn't trouble oneself with. It is not cared for. If a thing is neglected, one does not enjoy oneself with it, nor do anything with it at all for that matter.

Considered in this literal sense, the opposite of neglecting something is picking it up and holding it. The opposite of neglect is care and present usage. We can also look at the literal etymological root of "neglect" and consider it figuratively without stretching it too far, as we often talk about holding something in one's mind, or letting it drop off. The thoughts we neglect are the thoughts we have forgotten, that have dropped off and don't come to mind.

To pick something up, (i.e. to use it, practice it, or even occupy one's thoughts with it), one must give it their attention, and in so doing, something else gets set aside, or even dropped. This is because we only have so many hands to hold things with, and only so much time in the day to care for them or use them. Even someone with a hundred hands could still only hold a hundred things, and the catch is always that a hundred other things are left lying around. There is only so much time in a day before we have to sleep, and only so much space that can be used in a room before things have to get put in a closet. When we set up our spaces, we choose the things that will stay out on the tables and get dusted off now and again, and some things will wind up in the closets, gathering dust, neglected.

For the sake of this entry, I am more interested in the figurative sense of neglect. For instance, it is not uncommon for someone to say, "I have been neglecting playing this instrument." I sometimes say "I have been neglecting my writing," or more specifically, "I have been neglecting this blog post I was intending to finish." When we talk about neglecting a practice, neglect means falling out of practice, usually for a while. Maybe something we used to do every day, we now only do once a week, or once a month. Truly neglecting something would be fully forgetting it, but often we still notice the things we neglect, like the bookshelf you've been meaning to dust off for months but haven't gotten around to. Potential in something may still be noticed, yet there it lays, untouched.

Just as neglect is indifference, being fully engaged in a practice or habit is to be interested in it, caring for it in some way. But indifference doesn't have to be permanent—most of the time we can pick these things back up. Getting re-accustomed to a practice may require some time, like the fingers remembering effective placement over the holes or strings on an instrument. To be fully enjoyed, an old neglected object will likely require some dusting off. But for one who has played an instrument enough times, even if it's been a very long time, the fingers will remember where to go more easily than they would if trying something completely new. The table in a corner with some objects that have not been wiped in so long that they begin collecting dust is not as neglected as the box in the corner of the basement that may not have been picked up for years. The table is easier to dust off, but both can be dusted.

We can also talk about leaving a habit behind, which in a way is a kind of neglect. If a continued practice can become a habit, we can neglect the habit as we can neglect a practice. After all, we commonly use the phrase "I picked up this habit." Of course, some things take more will to pick up, while others are easy. Some things we don’t see ourselves as neglecting because we think they are better off being left to lie. For example, smoking cigarettes is an easy habit to pick up, but you never hear someone who hasn’t smoked in a while say they have been neglecting smoking, or neglecting their cigarettes. On the other hand, going to the gym requires a lot of will to get into for most people, and people will often feel they have neglected working out if they miss a few days or a week of going. But if we can sensibly use the word "neglect" to refer to our habits, from here it’s not such a stretch to say that one who has stopped using some addictive substance has neglected his or her appetite for that. They have become indifferent to it—they have dropped it. In this strange way of bending the usage of a word, “neglect,” there might be a bit of truth in saying something like that.

But again, habits are like objects—there are only so many one can hold onto at once. In picking something up and holding on to it so as to use it and be with it, one is always neglecting other things. In picking up a cigarette habit, I could be neglecting looking after my lung capacity, or paying attention to the complaints of my throat after smoking one too many. In still smoking more, I am neglecting the ideal of being as healthy as I can be, in favor of satisfying a certain appetite. If someone goes to the gym regularly, through the duration of being at the gym, they are passing on the chance to sit around and read or play games, or smoke cigarettes for that matter. It is interesting to take the literal sense of neglect and bend it to consider mutually exclusive concepts.

Because there is a limit to how much we can literally practice, care for, and hold on to, there is an art to deciding what will end up being neglected. Since we choose the things we hold on to and those which we neglect, there can be elegance in the way one spends one's time, in the habits one chooses to occupy oneself. It is like how when we set up a room, some things get displayed on the tables, while others get put in boxes in the closet, and the decisions as to what gets displayed and neglected make up one's style—and almost everyone who goes through this process sets up their room with their own peculiar sense of elegance. Indeed, our word "elegance" comes from the Latin word "eligere," which literally means "select with care, choose," and comes from the same root as our word "elect."

Being humans, with bodies of particular structures, it just so happens to be that we can only hold on to so many things at once. Existing in a single place in space, we can only do so much at once, And existing for a limited span of time, there is only so much in total that we can do. So it goes, and so it is not an uncommon experience for someone to reflect on the past from where they stand today and think of how much has changed, and how much may seem to have been lost. For example, someone might say, "I remember when as I child, I used to love dinosaurs and wanted to be a paleontologist. How I have neglected that passion in my adolescence and adulthood!" But this is the consequence of choosing among our limitations, and if someone could do literally everything at the same time, it would be quite impressive, and perhaps even tantamount to godhood, but it would certainly not be elegant. Perhaps that is one of the gifts of mortality and limitation—it necessitates the potential for elegance.

As we can talk about neglecting habits and practices, we can also talk about neglecting certain thoughts, and certain frames of consciousness. In every moment we live, we are thinking one thought or another. How often do you repeat the same thought throughout the day—day in and day out? (Bearing in mind the uniqueness of every given moment in which we exist, is it ever really the same thought?) If we think in phrases and words, those words can be repeated an immense amount of times throughout the day. If we think in images, those images can be envisioned repeatedly. "I am going to do this tomorrow." How many days will someone think this thought before they actually find themself doing the thing they thought about doing?

We can think about this in terms of our values as well—the habits and practices we value, and the thoughts and images we value. To return to the example given above, the choice between spending the night reading and smoking cigarettes, or spending the night at the gym, can also be thought of as a choice between the values of pleasurable relaxation or healthy physical activity. One cannot always satisfy both values simultaneously. Moving to a new pattern of valuation is leaving behind the old one. But it is always there waiting in the corner for you to return to it and pick it up again. Maybe, as some people hold on to smoking in lieu of healthier habits, some people hold on to thinking self-destructive and sabotaging thoughts in lieu of helpful and encouraging thoughts. It is true that the mind has a much greater capacity for holding on to various thoughts than hands do for holding on to various things. We only have two hands, but the mind can juggle an uncountable number of thoughts in a very short span of time—but this time is still limited.

In the space of a moment, there is only one thought that can be thought at that given time—but a short span of time can be divided into nearly infinite moments. How do we hold and care for ourselves, and what thought-patterns do we hold on to? Moment after moment passes, and maybe those productive, encouraging thoughts have been neglected, as a series of moments became a very long time. That which is neglected and tarnished, we can pick up and polish, and we can see it in a new way after it has been left for so long. Just like someone can start playing an instrument well that they once played, even if it has been neglected for a long time, and begin to make beautiful music again, so can we start thinking those helpful thoughts that bring us to the places we want to be, becoming the beautiful selves we have always had the potential of being. You can pick something up that is brand new. Can you pick something up that is old and look at it in a brand new way? Maybe you neglected it for so long, it began collecting dust. But that better version of yourself is waiting in the corner, ready to be uncovered, polished off, picked up, given a little bit of care, and held again.

A Practical Method of Applied Semiotics

"This species-specific primary modeling device, also called language, endows human beings (differently from other animals) with the special capacity to produce a great plurality of different worlds, real and imaginary. This means that human beings are not condemned to remain imprisoned in the world as it is, to forms of vulgar realism." (Susan Petrelli, Semioethics, subjectivity and communication. For the humanism of otherness, 20)

Ethics is the type of philosophy we are doing when we try to figure out what is right and wrong. Put succinctly, Ethics is figuring out how to act, and why. The semiotic endeavor wherein we seek to understand what we mean when we talk about doing the right thing is known as semioethics. To paraphrase the words of Petrelli, semioethics lies at the intersection of semiotics, ethics, and pragmatism. My work in developing a practical theory of semioethics has turned into something I call Applied Semiotics. The reason why I consider what I am proposing here to be a method of semioethics is because it is intended to be not just an aid in contemplation, but to be a process that sets us up for effective action, or at least allows us a space to evaluate our past actions. In other words, it is meant to be a practical and accessible application of semiotic thinking.

In doing a brief internet search, I have found others who do something or another they call "Applied Semiotics," but none of them seem to be exactly the same as what I am doing here, and I have not based this approach on any of these other things those people have been doing.

Some of these writers apply semiotics to "branding" and business applications, which could not be farther from what I am doing. Some journals are literally applying Semiotics across academic disciplines, and for that reason could be a bit inaccessible to those not disposed to academic discourse. These journals seem to present respectable bodies of work in themselves, but don't appear to be relevant to what I'm doing here in any explicit way. Distinct from these other writers, what I am doing in the system of Applied Semiotics I propose is attempting to apply semiotic thinking to experiences we undergo in our day-to-day lives, both on a personal basis and a basis of social interactions. I have experimented with this in my own day-to-day conversations and reflecting, and what I provide here is a general outline to help guide myself and others, particularly in a workshop setting. It is not a strict method to be followed verbatim, but rather a general guideline which welcomes deviations and ingenuity. I may revise this in the future, but I can say at this time that it is now in a state that I am comfortable publishing.

The only prerequisites that any person needs to be able to engage in this method are sincerity, patience, and a willingness to participate.

I am going to test this approach in my next few workshops and see how it works out. This outline is intended to be easily exercised by anyone in any conversation or personal contemplation, and the goal of this method is twofold:

A) So we can enrich our experience of meaning and thus understand ourselves and one another to our utmost capacity, allowing us to think and act more effectively.

B) So we can resolve conflict in a manner that does not just leave one winner and one loser, but rather in a way that leads us to a more complete understanding, where we come to a resolution that benefits everyone by stimulating us to become more conscious and thus more connected, by which means we evolve together.

The Method

I have outlined this method in four steps. I stopped at four because I found that to be the minimum amount of distinct steps to completely cover what I hope for us to be able to accomplish, while being a small enough number to stay simple and easy to remember:

1. Signs - What is the literal meaning? What is the meaning intended by the speaker? (Typically these will be words, as this takes place as a conversation. However we can consider other forms of signification as well.)

• Domain: Internal/Personal - Understanding
• Aided by: Etymology, denotation, current accepted usage, personal meanings to the speaker.

2. Empathy - What does it mean to the other? How is the meaning interpreted by the other? (In speaking of our capacity to do this, Robin Dunbar calls this Intentionality.)

• Domain: External/Mutual - Understanding 
• Aided by: Considering other's perspective, asking questions to learn of other's experience, imagining seeing through the other's eyes.

3. Impact - What does it mean in the bigger picture? What is the effect? Who does it affect?

• Domain: Internal/Personal - Assessing Implications
• Aided by: Listing consequences, considering implications, reviewing motives.

4. Collaboration - What meaning are we creating together? How do we build this world together?

• Domain: External/Mutual - Assessing Implications
• Aided by: Elaborating and sharing visions/ideals, creativity and building solutions, identifying where our ethics and motives intersect.

It would appear that a simple quadrant table can help in conceptualizing this method:

I didn't initially intend to categorize the steps in this kind of diagram, but as I was evaluating them, I noticed that they ended up fitting into this format quite naturally. 1 and 3 I consider internal because they are oriented towards individual reflection. They don't need to be exclusively personal, but they can be easily conducted without the aid of a conversation partner. On the other hand, 2 and 4 I call external because they are oriented towards a conversation with one or more people, even though it is not impossible to do them by oneself. While these do break down nicely into quadrants, I keep the numbering in this diagram because this method is intended to be followed step-by-step, with step 4 being the ideal situation we can arrive at, as it is the point at which we shift to a creative mindset where everyone is engaged. That collaborative fourth step serves as a springboard for us to begin taking action.

In individual self-reflection and mental health, 1 has the most bearing because the thinker is reflecting on their words and what they mean to themselves. Are meanings being used in the way they are most commonly used, or do words take on a new and unique meaning based on specific associations and experiences?

In one-on-one relationships,  2 has the most bearing because we strive to understand one another so that we may better relate. It is amazing what happens when we simply intend to understand each other before intending to do anything else.

When planning on an individual basis, 3 has the most bearing because we seek to consider the way we are affecting the world through what we are attempting. It is always worth taking a pause and asking ourselves if we have the complete picture, or only part of a bigger picture.

In social applications, 4 has the most bearing, because a social context is always about what we do together. 4 is the point at which, having come to our fullest understanding through the previous three steps, we can bring things back together. It is, in essence, synergy, conducted in a semiotic mindset.

Regardless of the situation where one may apply this method, it is possible to engage in all four steps. When I first came up with this outline, I was envisioning how I might conduct a workshop that is interactive for a sizeable group of people. I think this method is really intended for use in a conversation between at least two people. That being said, any one person might find some usefulness in conducting a cognitive exercise where they imagine a discourse with someone who has totally different views—though in doing so, one may be limited by one's own imagination.

Breaking it Down

Even if we cannot come to agree on the exact same values, (nor should we necessarily aim to do so, as our individual perspectives each offer something unique and valuable to this shared experience), we can, through some careful listening and directed effort, get a good sense of where our values can intersect. I think a good analogy for this method would be singing in a choir, or playing in a band. I'll stick with the choir analogy because a conversation involves people's voices: A choir is not comprised of everyone singing in unison, singing the exact same notes at the exact same tempo—if it were, it would be rather dull and uninteresting. What makes a good chorus so beautiful is the way that people sing various different parts, different notes, and different tempos, all harmoniously intersecting in a way that makes the whole even more beautiful than each individual part. Some people may indeed be singing the same part, so unison is not entirely out of the question for some period of time, but even for these parts, each singer sings it with their individual voice, style, and volume. In a choir, we tune ourselves and pay attention to if we are singing more or less quietly or loudly, each of us making concessions to not sing at our loudest and proudest, instead carefully listening to each other with an ear to the overarching beauty of the whole.

When we carefully listen to each other and come to be conscious of how we each interpret our experiences, the possibilities expand substantially. New solutions can come to mind that nobody would have been able to think of on their own. Rather than striving for a groupthink or herd mentality, this approach allows each person to hold to their individual values and needs, making it a fitting template for a discourse that acknowledges (and perhaps even thrives on) intersectionality.

Resolve (as a verb) is a word that means "settle or find a solution to." If we look at the etymology of the word, we see it comes from the Latin word "resolvere," which meant "to loosen, loose, unyoke,", "to set free," "to relax," and in some contexts "to dispel." (Looking at it in terms of semiotics, one might say we unyoke the yoking our concepts have imposed upon us. One might also say we dispel the spells our words have cast over us.) The sense of "to loosen" and "to cut apart" can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root "*leu-". Interestingly, our modern word "analysis" can also be traced back to this ancient linguistic root.

To use another analogy, consider a context to be a tapestry, i.e. an assembly of threads, with the threads being the meaningful aspects or signs that comprise the whole meaningfulness of a situation, which would be the tapestry. (I did not come up with this myself, as the etymology of the word "context" shows us that it originally came from roots "con-" and "*teks" which literally say "to weave together."). When we seek a resolution to a problematic situation, we are all coming into the conversation with our own contexts, and the situation as a whole has its context. Resolving that situation is like unwinding a beautiful and intricate textile so that we can see the individual threads that comprise it. When we can see the colors and textures of each of the threads, and get a sense of how they got into the shape they were in before we unwound them, we can do so much more than if we were just trying to sew these already-wound tapestries together. Instead of being tightly bound up, we relax and see each other for who we really are.

This may be an imperfect analogy, but the point is that we often come into situations of conflict, both internal and external, with a lot of wound up meanings and implications, and we don't always give ourselves a chance to communicate these meanings and implications to one another. Often, an individual may not fully understand the meanings that came together to make the experience one finds oneself in. If this method does anything, it sets us in a frame of mind where we take the time to sit down together and come to understand ourselves, each other and the full situation to the utmost of our abilities, and thus increase our capability to create a better situation—one that takes into account each person's perspective and circumstance.

How We Imagine a Better World

Is there something to the talk of "making your dreams come true?"

In the grand scheme of the twistings and turnings of eternity, our lives pass on their transient paths in what amounts to a blink. How uncanny, then, that in the span of such a relative instant, within a much, much smaller instant of however long we spend contemplating, we find ourselves at times dreaming up imaginary futures than can span much greater lengths. Goals and ideals, ambitions and aspirations, dreams of what could be a righter, juster way for things to be, and of a world the dreamer will never see. It seems paradoxical that our word "ideal" is thought to originate from the Proto-Indo-European root "*weid-", which means "to see." The ideal can be thought of as a future vision, and yet it is not the kind of vision that we see with our eyes.

What do these visions and imaginings all amount to? They are the conceptualizations of the minds of highly intellectually developed primates. As we turn this way and that, searching, seeking, and sometimes finding, how often it is that we turn inward. Consciousness turns towards itself, becoming conscious of itself, and envisions itself as something else—something, perhaps, better? The context in which consciousness imagines itself is as a body, or in a body, depending on the ontology to which the imaginer subscribes.

Would the consciousness be able to express this kind of vision without being so embodied? Perhaps we cannot truly know the answer to this question, but it certainly seems as though the human animal is the only thing we are currently aware of which has the ability to reflect on these matters through the use of linguistic symbols. It is with these linguistic symbols that we tell ourselves stories of our pasts, presents, and futures. Language is the embodied form by which we contemplate and express these visions. Human minds have developed to the point of being so highly self-aware, that we can come to reflect on our own self-awareness, as I am doing right now in writing this.

We may not always be the only ones who do this, and we can ask ourselves if other species will continue to evolve towards greater self-awareness. As long as we continue to destroy them, however, we may never get the chance to find out. In fact, those species that demonstrate self-awareness: dolphins, crows, pigs, and others that are here unmentioned, but which you may read about with a simple internet search, may end up being extinguished by the results of our more destructive endeavors. Or perhaps we will first push ourselves into extinction, and it is they that will outlive us humans, perhaps someday telling stories that we will never hear.

How ironic that the mind that evolved to the point of being able to dream and idealize a better way of living has also dreamt up the means for its own annihilation. This annihilation exists as a physical potential already, held in the form of undetonated but highly destructive nuclear warheads that have been stockpiled in vast amounts. The shift of the climate towards a seemingly ever more catastrophic state, the pollution and over-fishing of the oceans, and the destruction of the rain forests may be leading us down a much more insidious path to annihilation. And as we continue to further develop more advanced and powerful technology that can make yet greater changes on the environment, the decision as to how we will use this technology will form the determination between this dreaded fate being mere possibility—or grave inevitability.

But why would I start a piece that began with talking about the glorious things we dream of, and then twist the reader's arm and take us down this wayward venture of exploring the horrors man has committed and has the potential of committing? The reason I have chosen to write about that is because in this troublesome but undeniable  development, there is yet to be found a deep-seated gem: for the devastation humankind has wrought is a testament to the impact that can be made when people work together for a certain ideal. In the case of the above example, the ideal at work is that of gaining profit and utilizing all of the planets resources—an ideal which while on its own can lead to the reaping of substantial benefits and enjoyable luxuries, can certainly be (and has certainly been) quite costly when implemented with disregard for the land, the creatures living on it, and the ecosystem as a whole. If we take this incredible power of imagination that we refine and express through language, and turn it to the betterment of one another, and ideals of compassion, wisdom, and liberty, we can raise up together and create a world as beautiful and inspiring as the previous vision is ugly and disheartening.

The twistings and turnings with which I began this article essentially describe the grand scheme of things: motion and activity, or substantial non-idealized existence. The dreaming and idealizing we engage in takes place at merely one bend or turn, and the inward gaze is like pausing to momentarily look in a mirror. These dreams, both despicable and delightful, are but a flicker on the great cosmic mirror. But brightly may this flicker glimmer—and those who gaze at it too long may find themselves momentarily blinded. When we reflect, when consciousness looks at itself, it is looking at a reflection in the great mirror of the cosmos—an image of an existence, future or past, that is not the present moment in which consciousness exists. And the bright flicker is the dazzling manner in which fixating on the past or future can captivate us and pull us out of the present, where our real power exists, where the motion and twistings and turnings take place. Whether we imagine a utopian or dystopian future, this very imagining, in order to maintain its bearings, requires that we return to looking at the realities of the world we live in. Our aspirations must be grounded in the reality we find ourselves in, if they are to have any impact on changing it. Our ideals, (our visions of that which is not), must be balanced by our sight, (looking at that which is).

If people were to come together and unify our vast capacity to change the world in order to realize the dream of a world where we prioritize the health of the planet, the advancement of scientific discovery, and the betterment of every human being with maximization of freedom, the world would be transformed in short order. If we have been able to wipe out much of the life of the ocean that evolved over billions of years within the span of only less than a hundred years, imagine what type of positive impact we could make by dedicating the next hundred years to the thriving of civilization, idealizing an attitude of environmental stewardship and a harmonious coexistence with the other species of this planet. It may seem like a tall order to wish for everyone to come together for these ideals, but the imagination and articulation begins with individuals—it begins with you and me. Each one of us has the capacity to implement the glorious dreams we dream of in our own lives, and these dreams can extend to include the lives of others. After all, aren't we all living one life together, here and now?

It seems to me that being able to articulate an idea of the way things could be as being a certain way is one of the most powerful, wonderful, and dangerous things to ever happen in the entirety of the universe's existence. What other animals do we know of who think of being in different places than they are? Do our dogs imagine us while we are gone? There is probably evidence to suggest a plausible answer to that question, but I ask it more in a rhetorical sense, to lead into pointing out what makes us different from them and other imaginative animals—and that is our being able to articulate, and in particular to express through language, a particular expression of a particular state envisioned in the future.

Furthermore, once spoken or written in physical form, such future visions can be read and interpreted and considered by others who may not have had such articulations occur in their own minds. Thus, inspiration can spread like a blessed fire, just as fear and demagoguery can be communicated like a cursed plague. With the dawn of language, no longer was one's imagination limited to a silent musing. This, I believe, is the primary means by which human civilization has risen to such heights in such a short span of time, and it is also how we have at times become so collectively misguided and have made terrible destructive large-scale decisions such as genocide and mass-scale war. We can move together towards a united vision, or at least as close as we can get to each other's respective visions, by uniting around the words we share a common understanding of through our customarily developed linguistic system.

As those ideas which we articulate in the public sphere are to inevitably find themselves leaving impressions on the minds that understand and interpret them, it falls upon those who project their ideals to refine and shape them in the most mindful and considerate of ways. When one articulation is taken up and reinterpreted through another mind, the refining process can be further potentiated. It is in this way—by potentiating one another's ideals—that we can enact the greatest change by working collaboratively. But he who plants the seed has the initial responsibility of taking the time to understand and consider that which he is about to sow, and to foster a down-to-earth connection with the ground the seed is to be planted in. This is the essence of Semioethics: the endeavor within Semiotics wherein we contemplate and consider what it means to do something good. In Ethics we consider what is good and how we go about doing what is good. Semioethics takes a step deeper and asks what we mean when we say something is good.

With sincere, genuinely well-meaning intentions and inquisitive minds, we can take ourselves to incredible places. Now, I am not suggesting that you or I are tasked with hashing out the perfect ideal that will lead us all to some kind of salvation, nor would I encourage that degree of hubris. What I am suggesting is that we not take our ability to propose ideal futures for granted. Knowing the impact we can make, we can be mindful of the dreams we are dreaming, listen carefully to one another, and take the time to envision something that really makes sense. We can all recognize the great power we have at our fingertips, and in doing so there lies, as Spiderman's Uncle Ben so famously tells us, the recognition of great responsibility. Because everything we dream can become what we say and put out into the world in embodied form, and that has palpable potential to affect and shape reality. There's nothing supernatural about that. Of course, Uncle Ben got that idea from free-thinkers writing during the French Revolution. They saw that people in power are not noble just for having power, nor is nobility passed through blood, but that what is truly noble is to recognize the responsibility inherent in great power. I am using the statement in regard to our capability of imagining ideals, and I will acknowledge that even those who stay silent have some share of responsibility. But I am not the sort to push responsibility on people, but rather to simply point it out. The real point of this article is to thoroughly consider and give the reader a sense of the power we possess through the articulation of our ideals. And so here I can joyfully leave off and say: with great power comes great possibility.

Friendship, Love, Freedom

"It is all in the day's work; everything I do, I do con amore; and so too I love con amore."
-Soren Kierkegaard (Johannes Climacus), "Either/Or"

There is a commonly known expression: "If you love someone, set them free." It seems these words are actually closely related, and this relation goes back a long ways.

The etymology of the word "friend" can be traced to Proto-Indo-European, where we find the present participle form of the root, "*pri-". "*pri-" means "to love," and the present participle form, "*pri-ont-" could roughly be translated to "loving." We also find that "*pri-" is closely related with the Old Church Slavonic "prijatelji," which means "friend," as well as Welsh "rhydd," which means "free."

Love loves, and does nothing more. All love accepts that which it loves, letting the beloved freely be that which is loved. Why do I say this? Because the moment we decide that the beloved must be changed, it follows that by changing, it must be changed into something else—something entirely different. Therefore, the desire to change the beloved is something other than the initial love, even if a bit of love remains.

All friendship has love at its roots. Why do I say this? Because when we call somebody our true friend, we accept them for who they are and allow ourselves to abide with them, that is, to stay by their side. While it is theorized that the kinship between the words "free" and "friend" has its factual historical basis in the association between free men (as opposed to the association between a master and slave), I find that there is an even richer way of looking at the relationship between these words. To love someone, we let them be, that is to say, we let them be free. When we love our friends, we let them be who they are. If we seek to change a perceived quality in a friend, it is because the quality that has appeared is something that we cannot abide with, and thus cannot love. It is in this way that I find "love" and "freedom" are still related in today's usage.

What are the things that we love about somebody? We may find that we love their way of saying and doing things. We may find that we love their courage or their compassion. We may love their sadness or anger. We may even love just about everything about them. That which we are able to love about someone depends on how we see them, and if we see someone behave a way in a situation, or see someone display a certain quality, we then are capable of loving this behavior, or loving this quality. In other words, if we believe someone is a certain way or has a certain quality, we can then dispose ourselves towards that quality in one way or another. We could approve of said quality, or disapprove of it. We might scorn it or desire it. We might hate it, or we might love it. This entry simply focuses on how we love. Those things that we love about somebody are those things that we stay with, and, so it seems, those things stay with us.

Some may find this to be an oversimplification. For I say "love," and perhaps different meanings come to mind for different readers. But when you look at it more closely, love is actually quite easy to understand. The tricky part is that we never seem to be feeling just one thing purely. Oftentimes with love of any degree, whether it be a kindly friend's love, a concerned family's love, or a passionate love of romantic attraction, etc., there are other feelings that happen at the same time, for instance, striving, needing, lamenting, anger, or hate. All of these kinds of experiences have led people to say things like "love is really sadness," "if you love something, you need it," and "love is really akin to hate." Many people think that love is happy, love is sad, love is angry, love is needy, on and on and on. Many people think that love needs, love laments, love fights. But really, these are  overcomplications that lead people to think love is so hard to define. They overcomplicate because they add more to love than what love itself is. The truth is, love loves.

Now I would like to move from exploring the more general sense of love to a more specific sense. I would like to explore the sense of love that we often call "romantic love," which the ancient Greeks called "eros," a name which was also used for the god, Eros, who we commonly refer to by the Latin name, Cupid. Before diving in, I want to make note of the way that the Greeks' use of love is tied up with a sense of desiring or wanting. In the Platonic dialogue, Symposium, Socrates and his friends discuss the nature of eros, and before getting into it, he establishes a couple things: one is that "everyone who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not present," and the other is that "when you say, 'I desire that which I have and nothing else,' is not your meaning that you want to have what you have now in the future?" Making note of these remarks, we can see how if love is tied with desire, then this desire either seeks to be with that which it has not, or seeks to stay with that which it has. This seems to fit just perfectly with my earlier characterization of love as wanting to abide or stay. For abiding is a disposition towards the future. Now I will remind the reader that I do not think that love necessarily connotes desire, for we do not lose the sense of "loving" if we take away the sense of "desiring." However I think it is important to deal with the sense of "desiring" as it is commonly connected with love. It is by assuming there to be a correlation between love and desire that people often mistake love for lust, or assume that love involves lust. Really, lust is just a form of desire that can accompany love, especially eros. I think we can conclude from this digression that if love sets its gaze towards the future, it can easily bring about a strong desire, but this desire, which looks towards the future, is not the same thing as love, which in the present simply loves.

Now to resume the exploration of romantic love. The old Proto-Indo-European term "*leubh-", which means "to care, desire, love," is closely related with Latin "lubet" which means "pleases," and, (my favorite version), Lithuanian "liaupse," which means "song of praise." Closer to our English language term, we have Old English "lufu," which means "love, affection, friendliness," which is closely related to the Old High German and Old German words for "joy" and "praise." In all of these we see a common thread. That sense of joy, praise, care, and, as some, such as Indians and Greeks, use it, desiring.

To return to the Greeks, they considered eros to be love of the beautiful. "For the beloved is truly beautiful, and delicate, and perfect, and blessed" (Symposium). It does seem to always be the case that when we love someone in a romantic way, we find them beautiful. To reconnect with my earlier conviction that love abides, we might make this distinction: In loving a beloved friend, there are many different things about them that we may find ourselves loving; while in loving someone in the romantic sense (aka eros), the quality which we find standing out is beauty. So when the beloved is seen in a romantic way, their beauty is what is most loved, and the beauty is what stays with the lover. (I don't just mean beauty in the way we might say a waterfall is "beautiful." Here, and fitting the context, I mean it in the sense of "attractiveness," "seductiveness," and in the oldest sense, "revered." This is what I think the Greeks had in mind when talking about "beauty" regarding eros.)

The Lithuanians seem to get closest to the activity of love with their phrase, "liaupse." If there were any action that would be a perfect parallel for love, would it not be music? A song exists as an expression in itself, not sung for any means, but simply to be sung. Love is the same way: it has no end, yet is an end in itself. Joy is one of our words in the English language which has not departed far from its Proto-Indo-European origins. "*gau-" means "to rejoice," and it is very closely related to the Ancient Greek word, "gaio." This sense remains in the Old Germanic words that are closest to Old English and its daughter language, the English we speak today. When we love something, we praise it, we rejoice in it, and the joy needs not achieve any purpose, but is simply rejoicing. So it is that when beauty becomes the object of love, we find in many of those cases the all-too-familiar lover's poem or song.

The core revelation that Socrates arrives at in his effort to understand the nature of love is the idea that the highest form of love loves beauty in itself, "beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting" (Symposium). We take note that Socrates would often postulate things in terms of "eternal Forms." He would often say that all things in the material world derive their qualities from immaterial, objective, eternal "Forms." What he is talking about in Symposium is the "Form of Beauty," a Form that every beautiful person, animal, and object partakes in, just as every instance of justice would take its quality from the "Form of Justice," and so it goes with any Form. I am not inclined to believe in the existence of Platonic Forms, and it seems to me that the knowledge of such Forms may be impossible. In other words, I don't believe there are such things as beautiful people. One of my favorite parables from the Chuang Tzu goes as follows: 

Men claim that Mao-ch'iang and Lady Li were beautiful, but if fish saw them they would dive to the bottom of the stream, if birds saw them they would fly away, and if deer saw them they would break into a run. Of these four, which knows how to fix the standard of beauty for the world?

 It seems clear to me that no one creature understands what true beauty is. But then, no one man or woman knows this either. Could it be that beauty truly lies in the eye of the beholder?

We need not deal with the confusions of asserting objective, ethereal Platonic Forms, to understand what I find to be the kernel of truth in what Socrates says: When we love something in the romantic way, it is not that we love a thing that is beautiful, but, rather, we love the beauty in that thing. When the lover feels eros, the beloved is seen as beautiful by the lover. Bearing in mind the semiotic angle that this exploration takes, it seems no small stretch to take these words of Socrates in a semiotic sense: "beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities" (Symposium). When he says this, Socrates seems to imply that we are seeing into the "eternal reality" of the "Form of Beauty." However, if we understand, via semiotics, the way in which a mind is always affecting and creating its reality by the way it defines things, we might say there is yet some truth in his words, and here's how I would express it: Regardless of whether there is an eternal "Form of Beauty" or not, it seems that whenever we love in this way, we bring forth beauty. There is no eye that can behold beauty but the eye of the mind.

Now, to take a final turn in this exploration, let us examine the role love can play for us in life. Love is a feeling that makes itself known. If there is a life worth living, it is a life loved. Whatever we love, we are willing to stay with it, and if we let love prevail, this acceptance warms the heart. Nietzsche wanted to be a lover of fate. In section 276 of The Gay Science he says:

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Amor fati is Latin for "love of fate." Even our fate we can learn to love. Can we see life and fate as beautiful? Can we bring forth the beauty in life? To have such a love that we are inspired to make music out of it, to sing a song of praise, ah, now that seems like a powerful view to take on life, (a view we take with the mind's eye). To truly love life would be to let it be, to let it be free. Being a friend to a beloved friend, we need not change them, but simply be their friend. Being a lover of a beloved lover, we need not change them, but simply love them. To love life is to set it free, which means not trying to change it, but to live it. Those who wish to be lovers of life with me, can you sincerely say these words? "I do what I love and I love what I do. I am what I love and I love what I am." If you can say these words, if you can love your life—set it free! The music will surely follow.