Thought Experimentation-Me, Myself and I

Blathering About the Whole Hiding-Behind-My-Words Business

My inspiration for this experimentation of thought does indeed force myself to become uncomfortable, analytical, and possibly a little self-critical. I am going to try and step out of my body as I write and notice the habits engrained within myself, particularly my ‘self’ that is exposed via writing. My inspiration comes not from the texts, although they too are a part of this investigation, but from a fellow peer’s blog in which he pointed out something I had not noticed which was in my own blog. The statement was: "I think I react this way because it is how it's socialized within us and our culture." My fellow blogger later said “An interesting thing happens in this statement; there is a shift from 'I' to 'we'. For those who clicked the link, and I hope you did because it's a good blog, you'll notice that the whole thing is written in that sort of 'we'ish fashion. The switch from 'I' to 'we' can be used to distance and protect oneself from the words. Anyway, these are old words and I'd rather not blather on about that whole hiding-behind-our-words business.”

Well, I am choosing to blather on about the “whole hiding behind our words” business. In fact, I will call it “Blathering about the whole hiding behind MY words business.” After re-reading this part of the blog, I actually started re-thinking my essay topic. Worries pop up in my head like “will everyone think this is cliché and trite? Will Tony think this is dumb and dull as dishwater? Am I dumb and dull as dishwater?!” You know what, I don’t give a damn. This is what I want to talk about. For once, I am going to try and focus on me, myself, and I and try not to worry about everyone else. I was shocked when I looked into my reaction to that sentence of the blog; where it went from worrying to what others will think of my topic, to specifically what the authority figure (in a matter of speaking I suppose) will think, to what everyone will think of me personally. As if I was defined by this paper or this topic. The fear of talking freely is even more deep rooted than I initially thought! If someone asked us FUCK if someone asked me if I thought I had the right to free speech I would say “well, obviously, read the constitution fool.” Yet so many of us FUCK yet I am not free in my speech.

To keep myself on track, I will record the utterance we FUCK I most often use in the case of mistakes. The ever risqué yet often used “Fuck.” It is a word that could inspire a whole book to itself, and I am sure it has (not the act, just the word itself), but that is not what I want to blather about right now. Possibly at a later time. Now that I have a blog, this is quite possible! I will put the word “Fuck” in capitols even, to make it more pronounced. I want to do this for two reasons. One, as I said, it will keep me on track of my goal to use more “I” terms and less “we” terms. Two, it is a fearful word to use in many cases for myself. We are afraid FUCK I am afraid of the judgment I undergo when I, a female with no particular grace in her step or hair like locks of gold, swear. I am not manly in any way really, but not particularly feminine all the time either. I am deeply afraid of the mixture of swear words and my personality, even though my true personality swears a shit ton. What are the connotations our society FUCK I put on swearing? I hide behind safe but jokingly near swear words like “frick” and “son of a mother!” so that any crowd can find me agreeable or of their lingo. I stretch myself out as far and broad as possible to satisfy as many people as possible, even those I dislike. No wonder I’m exhausted and have an identity crisis, I’ve been stretching myself thin to have everyone like me and agree with me instead of sticking to my guns and letting myself just be who I am. Hiding behind my words just continues this problem.

According to various sources, the general consensus seems to be that an ‘I-statement’ is a statement that begins with the word "I" (obviously) and “it is frequently used in an attempt to be assertive without putting the listener on the defensive.” Just as I suspected of myself. I do not want to be aggressive. I am afraid of being aggressive, or at lease being seen as aggressive since I care more about what others think of me than what I think of myself, as sad as that reality may be, it is my reality nonetheless, but I digress. Even when I feel aggressive, I do not want to be. Our society FUCK I hear the term “aggressive” and think of only negatives. The word “harsh” or “mean” comes to mind. Yet why do we FUCK I fear being aggressive? Sometimes it is completely necessary, even among friends. Debates (formal or informal) require aggressiveness to stay stimulating, sports need aggressiveness, hell chess needs aggressiveness. So many things in our FUCK my life require me to be aggressive in some form. Yet I do not become so. I cannot say I am not aggressive, I think we all are to some degree, but I am rarely outwardly aggressive. Even when I want or need to be. Even when it would go perfectly with the situation and who I am. Our FUCK my words can communicate so much of who we are FUCK I am, yet instead of using them as a tool or powerful means of finding myself (for lack of a much better term), a megaphone perhaps, I am using them as a rock to hide behind, to hide myself. I also see those words I suppress as a burden unto myself; a smaller rock I have in my hand that is annoying and weighing me down, but I am so afraid to drop it or throw it because I might accidently hit someone or something and become disagreeable to somebody (heaven forbid!) So I want to become more assertive in my words, in my thoughts, in my beliefs. I want to express me, not a passive possibility, not a “maybe that’s me,” but my true self. We shall FUCK I shall look unto the texts of J.L. Austin and Jacques Derrida for further exploration.

I love that Austin attacks what was at his time the belief in philosophy, how the main business of sentences is to state facts, and thus be true or false. Even though I know that we all know FUCK even though I know that sentences are not seen to be always about facts, many of my classes are, in fact (har dee har har), dominated by sentences of opinion and personal values, we FUCK I cannot get away from the feeling I need to back everything up. Either I need to have a bunch of pop culture quotes and references memorized, be crazy well read in the subject I’m talking about, or just have logical explanations for absolutely every idea and concept that comes out of my mouth. I tend to think out loud, thus why I talk a lot, and having clever explanations and quips or brilliant verifications and support for all that I say is simply impossible and unrealistic. This is where the “we” and “our society..” statements come in. They protect me from people’s disagreement or expectations of me. Speaking in these terms give us FUCK give me a loophole, an escape hatch in the conversation. It’s harder to disagree with these statements in the first place, and if one does, I can say something along the lines of “oh it’s not how my belief…” or “I’m just talking about society in general…” etc. I think I need to pay close attention to Austin’s conception of how “it was far too long… that the business of a ‘statement’ can only be to ‘describe’ some state of affairs, or ‘to state some fact,’ which it must do either truly or falsely.” I can say things without them having to be on either extreme; right or wrong, true or false.

Yet the idea of a speech act and that “the uttering of the words is usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act…the performance of which is also the object of the utterance, but it is far from being..the sole thing necessary if the act is to be deemed to have been performed” is what scares me. Austin brings up the saying “our word is our bond” and that “to say something is to do something.” What if I say something ‘wrong’ and someone who could have been one of the greatest people in my life judges me solely on that and what I’ve done with my words is scare them away and/or cause myself to be put into a labeled box? There is also the idea that we fear FUCK I fear that others will take what I say differently than I meant it and judge me on the fact, as I know (sadly) this is something I myself do.

Derrida Argues with Austin about illocutionary acts, and although I somewhat disagree with him on the idea that all communication in terms is traditionally reserved for writing, he has points that make me step out of my body, as I am trying to do here, and analyze myself in terms of MY communication. As I am doing this via writing, I feel I can still quote Derrida for this section.

Derrida says in the beginning of “Signature Events Context” how “It is certain that the word communication corresponds a concept that is unique, univocal, rigorously controllable, and transmittable: in a word, communicable?” We do not FUCK I do not want my word vomit to transmit disease unto others, or in other words, I do not want my word vomit to make me seem diseased. Is this even possible? If it was physical vomit I was spewing, everyone would tell me I was sick. I would know I was sick. Maybe all of us FUCK maybe I need to see my words not as vomit, but still communicable as a disease is. It goes along with how our class FUCK I see “Parasites” now. It does not need to solely turn up grotesque images of tape worms and the like; it can have positive connotations too. Instead of seeing my words as grotesque vomit people will always back away from, I need to see them as something those who listen will take and carry with them, either knowingly or unknowingly. From there, it may be isolated, but they could also pass it onto others. Other hosts of our FUCK my words. Who knows where some of my words are now; maybe they were the beginning of a huge chain that is hundreds or thousands of people long. Hell, why can’t I always think so optimistically?

One final idea I wanted to bring up was a concept we spoke about in class, from another Parasite. He pointed out that even in “I statements” we FUCK I hide. It was brought up that the statement “I feel” is less concrete than “I think,” and I know I tend to say “I feel” way more than “I think.” “I feel…” is safe. It is a safe statement of what we FUCK I am thinking. It doesn’t make us FUCK me feel as though we are FUCK I am pushing my views onto others. This way, they can’t push back. Newton’s third law states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” If I state “I feel such and such…” it is very passive in a way, at least not particularly aggressive, and so the listener or reader or what have you cannot be aggressive either. They can technically, but the chances are significantly lowered. But where is the line drawn between I feel and I think? How do we differentiate a feeling from a thought? This is the last question I leave you with, reader of mine, as I still need to question and ponder it in my own life and words.

This thought experiment has gone off on many tangents, for which I will not be apologetic. I refuse to be apologetic after discovering how passive I can be in my writing! Time for some aggressiveness! These tangents are just evidence of how difficult it was for me to focus on my topic as well as my “I statements” and who I am when I write and even when I speak. Basically any way I communicate. This is what I wanted to accomplish, and experimentation of my words and how I use them. As Master Abraham said quite rightly in “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr:” "Very well! Let it all end in mad confusion!"