___, therefore I am.
How would you complete this sentence? Don’t give it too much thought.
If you are of European descent, you may immediately start with “I think”, as Descartes thought, but if you are of African descent, what may come to mind is “We are”. This is a nod to the African concept of “ubuntu”. Alternatively, you may plainly reject that sentence and say something like “‘therefore I am’ is an illusion” which reflects on Eastern philosophy (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc). Maybe you take the scientific view that establishes there is no “self” centered in the brain and that “self” it’s a concept or a fiction (a made-up thing). Perhaps you may have completed that sentence in an entirely different way?
Now, let’s reflect on the way you completed your sentence and consider how that belief, an almost spontaneous response, can shape your life experience and how you interact with others.
Our first years are formative. We are sponges. The stories and proverbs we grow up with shape our view of the world and, therefore, our way of thinking and acting. It goes in circles of creation – recreation.
Joseph Shaules, who has worked in intercultural education in Japan, Mexico and Europe for more than 25 years, introduces us to the concept of “deep culture” in his book ‘The Intercultural Mind: Connecting culture, cognition and global living’. Deep culture is the “embodied networks of shared meaning and behaviour that enable communication and collaboration within a community”, which belong to the unconscious mind. This unconscious mind is what Kahneman described as “fast thinking”, the intuitive, associative and automatic kind of cognition, versus “slow thinking”, the paying attention, analytical and conscious reflection that occurs in the conscious mind. What is interesting to me is that the unconscious mind doesn’t filter through the conscious mind; it often operates independently of the conscious mind without us even noticing. The unconscious mind is “programmed” in the first seven years of life. In fact, it is the unconscious mind, the only mind running from birth until we are 6 or 7 years of age when we develop our conscious mind. From that point onwards, the unconscious mind continues working and absorbing information while we are actively using our newly developed conscious mind.
So, going back to the initial question: “____, therefore I am”
If you are from the West, you may have cited Descartes; if you are Eastern, you may have negated the sentence; if you are African, you may have referred to the interconnectedness of beings.
How is your response important in language? In other words...
How is your unconscious mind shaping your language?
Deep culture and your unconscious mind shapes your thoughts, words, and actions. Thought creates our language. Our current language, in return, reshapes our thoughts, which in return, makes and remakes our future.
If you believe this to be true, then you may accept that changing the direction of the present requires breaking the feedback loop formed between our mindset (a product of our deep culture), our conscious thoughts, the language we use, and how we use it.
We are language makers, future shapers.
Unlearning is much harder and more challenging than learning new things. In order to learn new things, we need to unlearn some of the beliefs and truths lodged in our unconscious minds. You know, the mind that works automatically, parallel to our conscious ones and almost without us noticing it? Yep, that one.
Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am)
There is nothing wrong with this statement. It is partially true, but one could also assert that I breathe, I eat, or I create (spiro, manduco vel creo) ergo sum. Where focus goes, energy flows, and this energy creates reality. For the ones who grew up with this “story”, we believe that our existence is inherent to our capacity to think and engage our thinking brain, our intellect. How has this belief shaped you and your actions? How has this belief directed your focus and your energy?
How would things have been different for you had the philosopher said, “I breathe, therefore I am” or “I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am”? Where would the focus and energy of our existence have taken us?
There are many ways to shift paradigms, but my focus and energy still lie in languages and education.
Think about the languages you speak, be it your mother tongue or any language you are currently learning. What parts seem unchangeable, maybe grammar-wise or regarding sentence formation, etc.? What if you entertained the idea that what appears unchangeable may belong to the deep culture/unconscious mind of those who continue to produce and influence language from their dominant position? What if you allowed some space to question these rules and directed your energy to understand the unconscious mind at its roots while perhaps rebelling against it?
For example, the topic of the deeply gendered quality of the Spanish language is a conversation that keeps happening with my clients at the rate of once or twice every fortnight! Spanish nouns have two genders, masculine and feminine, despite three genders appearing in Latin and other Indo-European languages. Why did the Spanish language drop the neuter? That is, yet again, another story of following the prestigious Latin of the Roman elite, but I digress. The two genders in Spanish seem to be an unchangeable thing. Whenever feminist and transgender groups want to bring the language up to date (i.e. by using the ending -e as neuter), we are confronted with the stone-age-like basic rules of Spanish and encounter fierce opposition from those who do not need to use neutered gender forms.
But what if instead of valuing the logic of our thinking brains, we had grown up with the essential virtue of our existence being that the individual exists because the community exists? Then, having words that describe all of us would have been the norm. What if we had grown up believing that there is no fixed self? Then, it wouldn’t be so dramatic to have more genders and related terms, as we wouldn’t be so attached to a binary masculine-feminine identity.
Unlearning is then a necessity if we want to create a future that is different to that which we have already experienced.
I look forward to a future that leads somewhere more inclusive, more respectful to nature, to our bodies and our fellow humans, more connected and more attuned.
‘Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.’
— Arundhati Roy
