Back to basics

Mankind searches both high and low in the scientific world. On the one hand, he looks for the ultimate unification of energy and matter, so that all laws are covered by a single one. On the other hand, he keeps breaking down matter into smaller units, looking for the single basic building block for all varieties of form.

Mentally, however, it is a one-way street for the human being. Intellectual growth is conversion of physical experiences into concepts, renaming partial information into knowledge, and as a consequence, communicating with each other at verbal levels that mean different things to different people and often mean nothing at all.

There are heavy words like "life" and "relationship", which are supposed to convey something specific but really conveys whatever the hearer wants to hear.  There are lighter words like "justice" and "fairness" which are often generalisations of a specific unpleasant experience. Even a common adjective like "good" or "rich" may be misleading unless the speaker and listener are calibrated similarly.

The victim in all this is Communication. Mature communication is one where we relate a specific experience and describe the relevant mental reaction. If we are generalising, it should be an addendum. Take the following statement.
"Anil is such a crass person. I don't know how I live with him."

What are the questions here? What incident made you think he is crass? Does he behave like this every time in a similar situation? Does he react the same way in other situations? Is this a serious disturbance to you? Is living together full of anxiety because of this? In fact, a psychotherapist or counseller asks these type of questions and tries to lead the person back to basics.

Healthy communication arises out of an initial internal check of basic reactions. Let not the mind jump up to a higher level language. Let us talk basic events and reactions and there will be no dispute. Then let us discuss conclusions and at worst there will only be a debate.

I have sometimes found it useful to speak of or recall an event like I am writing a play. A play has no scope for any commentary. It relates conversations and movements alone, leaving the audience to draw it's own conclusions. A novelist, on the other hand, trends to impose his own conclusions and generalisations on to the reader. A playwrite, as a base level communicator, needs much more control and skill.