[lbo-talk] Language & Wolf Children, wass RE: (The 23%...)

[Carrol Cox]

Shag: "I have a suspicion that it only makes sense if you have a good grasp
of a more sociological or anthropolotical understanding of the world.
Someone here, a few months ago, poo pooed the idea that it matters, for
example, that people felt transformed by the experience of direct democracy.
they saw it as crazy and cultish that rational human beings might get caught
up in something as silly as the effervescent excitement what was going on
around them. This does make little sense to the manly man approach to
politics as one where individuals make rational decisions about
self-interest and public interest.

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A preliminary quibble about terminology; the assumption that "individuals
make rational decisions about self-interest and public interest" seems
wildly, even obtusely, irrational to me. Put another way, "rationalism" as
implied in that proposition is irrational. I sort of want to keep the term
"rational" as a positive term, rather than surrender it to vulgar
utilitarianism.  But let that pass for now.

That premise of choice as a rational [vulgar sense] process runs totally
against everything we know about how humans think. Susanne Langer has a fine
analysis of a "Wolf Child' 'discovered' in France in the 1790s. The
phys9cian who took the young boy (around 18) into his home had a utilitarian
conception of language and what motivated it. The by had come to love milk,
and the physician tried to get him to say "milk" in order to get milk. Total
failure. Then theboy became ill and died. During the final illness the boy
kept murmuring "milk" to himself, apparently for the comfort of saying it
and thinking about it. Totally "irrational" (vulgar sense), but Langer's
analysis, that language was rooted in symbolization rather than
signification was quite rational: it was a powerful use of the rational [my
sense] intellect to understand the world. Her speculation on the origin  of
language was also interesting: it originated in ritual. Ritual (formal,
collective action) came first, chanting accompanied it, and language arose.
(I think I read someplace of two children, pretty much ignored by adults
around them, inventing their own language; that would be compatible with
Langer's speculation and even more with Ian Tattersall's speculation that
language was repeatedly invented by children before being picked up by
adults. Language exists for social and emotional pleasure, its 'utilitarian'
functions being later developments in individualized socities. 

And of course people not only "felt transformed" by the experience of direct
democracy but undoubtedly WERE transformed; but not of course permanently,
which would require the actual social/political achievement of direct
democracy -- i.e.,  on revolutionary transformation of society, the
liquidation of capitalist relations.

Carrol

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