This essay presents a theory of language and cultural development put in practical terms.  It has previously surfaced in various forms of writing, but has never formally appeared in its current structure, and thus is published here for the first time. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Linda Mussman, Founder and Artistic Director of Time and Space, Ltd. Theatre Company of New York City -- a practitioner of a theatre of the unconscious for more than a quarter-century -- and to the Umoⁿhoⁿ people.  The work was revised and completed in response to taking Umoⁿhoⁿ Language and Culture classes, taught by the late Thioⁿbaska [White Lightning], Thurman Cook, at Nebraska Indian Community College, and is posted as a memorial to him.
 

That language has interior meaning is recognized universally throughout the world. Humans come into comprehension of external realities through an exclusively private dialogue with themselves, which may or may not have common applications with others in space and time. But for each human, this internal conversation remains veritably their own, unique in all of nature.

It is the duality of this inner speech of the unconscious, between the instinctive qualities of an animal being and peculiar Humanity, where the origins of what may be understood as language comes into being. The significance of this most intimate of discussions is the Great Human Mystery, where psychology and soul intermingle to divulge tantalizing plausibility, later dissected by shamans, theologians and scientists.

If one opens this solitary self-dialogue to public scrutiny, often the messages alluded to through bodily nuance or glance of in-the-flesh communication in such Here-and-Now realities has more potency than its declared Word. These shades of subconscious intentions unavoidably revealed through such non-verbal dialects provide a context whereby various species can thus deduce whether or not one is authentic in one's own speech, however it is proclaimed.

Here the limitations of language are apparent. To presuppose at all a separation in the subconscious at the moment this chat takes place is itself, part of the problem. The roles may indeed be interchangeable, but in the use of English, for example, both as it is being written here, and its cumulative history as a conveyance of interpretive ideas and feeling, humans of any culture, most certainly endemic English-speaking peoples, often think as if the subliminal mind were capable of making the distinction.

The discordant tone of this tome is deliberate, for English is rapidly becoming the dominant tongue on the planet, and in doing so, the unconscious of all other vernacular speech is threatened with extinction, a loss more ominous to a future than simply the passing away of a rich diversity of color and vitality of cultures and peoples. Inside the construction of the vocabulary hidden in the manifestation of the subconscious, that is in conscious speech, is a discovery for the basis of an ancestral plight for all peoples, including those of early English derivatives

Cultures and societies come together upon certain surroundings, which themselves are given an architecture of meaning through experiences, however they happen to have; evolved or are defined by particular populations. It is this social agreement upon meaning and the group's intent to internalize that design for both individual and collective purpose -- with outward manifestations of ritual and. language, custom and tradition -- that delineates a people.

At the very instant when recognition occurs in the conscious mind, the hidden mind has already deposited, categorized, reviewed and assimilated this new knowledge in preparation for the next juxtaposition of creative stimuli. As the unconscious manifests through the internal physiological processes to conscious speech, the mental synthesis (a simultaneous fusion of emotional, psychological and spiritual experiences and perceptions) is like-wise one and the same with the body. 

At the same time, the infinite variety of plausible relationships an individual's thought may encounter with all of what has, does, or will exist in the world is predicated on the specific place, time, disposition present in that vortex at the moment this inner conversation occurs. Thus, in forming conceptual thought in the unconscious, the conscious reality of others (who are themselves fashioned after their own unconscious) shapes the environment upon which symbolic meaning takes form, in language and other communicative mediums.

Any number of external realities, each singular and all formed under the same physiological mental mechanism of the unconscious, are likely over millennia to both emerge and fold into one another (or disappear altogether) in witness to the scope, depth and range of the human experience. But within this outward construct of an internal architecture of meaning is a contradiction of process. Since the unconscious is irrevocably influenced by the habitat one is born into, this symbolic form given to a specific thought now consciously known to that person through the unconscious are colored. 

However common certain archetypes or themes may be in what Jung called the collective unconscious, there are shortcoming to this presumably universal, subliminal reality when confronted with the existential belief systems of actual cultures, which themselves are codifications of both the shared and solitary experiences drawn from both these exterior and internal worlds.

As Joseph Campbell aptly demonstrates, while there are as many similarities as differences in these mythologies, it is this singular variation that allows Humanity to truly breathe in the breath of life for the characteristic quality of their culture above all others. Yet as Alix Strachey masterfully documented in The Unconscious Motives of War (1950), how one identifies with the group is crucial in determining his or her social balance with respect to the equilibrium among the conscious and unconscious process for that individual in the Here-and-Now existence of that particular community. 

The fact that this self-identification begins to break down beyond extended families -- when tribal societies began clustering in larger villages compromised of numerous extended families, forming eventual towns, cities, regional territory, nation-states, and empires -- the economic and political forces unleashed in the drive to sustain the larger entity through social, cultural and religious reinforcement of the group's value system overwhelms the unconscious, thus alienating each individual subsequently born into the world from a direct comprehension (and relationship with) this integration of the conscious with the infinite.

In other words, to echo Descartes, as we think, so shall we be.

This too, demonstrates difficulty of language: its power to disassociate one from what actually exists in either internal or external fact. Obviously its opposite is likewise true, but what is important to remember are the allusions of a particular nomenclature. Since English in particular is an amalgamation of a number of root idioms, its fundamental weaknesses and strengths can be traced to these sources for archaic references, which at the point of their original entrance are closer to the essential premise of being a medium of intent, as well as substance.

There are of course, historic reasons why a language becomes what it is, and the ageless question of whether Form (usage) follows Function (content) becomes muddled in the broader experience of natural misfortune or human conquest encountered by a specific people. But except for the premonitions of dreams, visions, and other foreshadowing of future events these influences on language are outside the realm of both the individual or collective unconscious until after the upheaval or change has occurred; fears or prophecies notwithstanding, the denotation of speech cannot be separated from its connotative qualities already operative and existent in the mind of an infant from birth, and some would argue, even during its prenatal growth.

Such interplay between interior and external realities creates an immediate tension between both parties (the speaker and receiver) due to the intrinsic shortcomings in the very use of language. Perhaps the speaker does not realize the full extent of what is being said, even upon saying it. Free from self-awareness, the speaker's inner world suddenly becomes painfully apparent to the receiver, who may at this point become distracted due to a subconscious reaction to the speaker's unintended message. What is assumed by the speaker to have been related to the receiver may or may not be what was disclosed at all. 

Recognizing the subliminal shift in attentiveness of the receiver, the speaker may stumble further with assertions in an attempt to rectify the situation. But by now what was heard may not have been listened to, as what was thought to have been genuine may have been "betrayed by the unspoken," now manifest. The result is that neither speaker nor receiver achieves verbal cohesion in synchronicity with the other's unconscious, the true foundation for concurrent understanding.

Yet the broader problem of individual discernment can only be addressed when given the widest possible latitude of cultural choice within the moment of the utterance of the Word itself. Thus, one's birth into a gender, social class or spiritual clan, geography and time may all affect how gestures are seen by another, even if of the same gender, economic or political practice or religious teaching, because of this dual tension in each person between internal semantics and external boundaries.

What is going on here? If by its very existence language has this multi-tiered tension between non-verbal and verbal meaning that itself is governed through external local customs, and this in turn abides in a psychological dialogue within both the speaker and receiver that changes with each passing moment, how can an accurate exchange of thought, feeling, information or fact possibly occur?

Thus, we have archaeology of meaning upon which the architecture (ontology) of all language is based. This history of invoking the Word -- as in the translation into English of the Greek, Logos -- "living eternal" -reveals the subconscious mind as teeming with the presence of the unspoken Word, a spiritual dimension:

The above excerpt, taken from a contemporary intertribal text presenting generic tenants of ancient Aboriginal cosmology of the Americas, mirrors the experiential reality of Logos, as in:

In the beginning was the Word, 
And the Word was with
And the Word was

In a dominant culture misled by a so-called "Hellenic" tradition we are taught that these capacities are mutually exclusive, that is, reducible to being scientifically measured or theologically interpreted as if unrelated, a far different outlook than of much older cultures. So much of this other past has been obliterated it is virtually impossible to reconstruct what the basis of these elder societies were. 

But in our modern time, fragmentation of the unconscious into being rendered rather than experienced remains a development peculiar to "the West," which has its roots in the actual use of language to delineate a singular thought as a substitute for the process of thinking. This makes the entire discussion of language in the 21st Century already moot, because the terms are not what they seem.

Indigenous people of the Americas have traditionally held a great respect for all relation(ships), living and non-living beings. No other word(s) or phrase in English has more Logos, or spiritual power for Aboriginal peoples, whose first language was once, after all, non-European. To understand the subtle if profound differences in the conveyance of language is to grasp the ultimate problem of an interior reality of being, a world-view intrinsic to the daily life of "Native" Americans, but not, at least in practice, as Vine DeLoria, Jr. for example, argues in God Is Red (1974, 1995), for a Christian West.

This clash of cultures of whatever sort or time, has led Humanity to the subjugation of one people over another, whether for economic, political or religious reasons. The essence of war itself, an artificial institution, lies in an inability as a species to translate the meaning of a word like relationship. (if not respect) as experienced by Indigenous people everywhere in their Aboriginal language as may be interpreted say, by "Native" Europeans.

Here then, in English, is the difference in world-views: Indigenous peoples everywhere still live (and strive to live, against great odds) their reality of spiritual practice, while some in doctrinaire teachings -- certainly a dogmatic Christian (and secular) West -- renders it. In a contemporary world the role of science and technology overwhelms even Christian belief: the moral weight of a "technical fix" to ecological problems first brought about by certain applications of science, for instance, is likewise not neutral. As Jerry Mander relates In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (1992), "(l)iving constantly inside an environment of our own invention, reacting solely to things we have created, we are essentially living inside our own minds . . . we are inside manufactured goods." (italics author's).³

As important as knowing through consumerism and capital exploitation the external consequences of this private existence are comprehending its hidden cost. Over the last generation and unaware of the connection, the Swiss scholar Alice Miller has nonetheless championed Indigenous cosmology asto relationship when applied to child-rearing practices, in Western terms. Writing originally in German yet translated paradoxically in clear, bold and precise English, she writes:

The so-called "traditional values" espoused by many today are exposed by Miller to be bankrupt of all relationship for anyone and everything (including God), devoid of all compassion, and devastating in their cruelty and brutality toward others. According to Miller, these values protect the adult, and blame the child for the adult's irresponsibility. To break the cycle, she advocates allowing the child to be free of adult expectations about proper behavior while providing a nurturing family, school, and community life, offering by example the re-enforcement of their own individual and collective humanity.

Comparisons of Miller's views with the rich, professional literature in Native education is striking. Again and again, both Aboriginal and non-Native educators of the "field discipline" stress the totality of Indigenous experience as the beginning of the learning process for Native children, the exact opposite of the rote method of the West. The moral imperative of control so prevalent in Euro-American education -- a linear construct that has as its cause the child being essentially willful, whose will must be broken, and whose life-affirming feelings is threatening (as Miller says) to the autocratic adult, and whose effect must be controlled to protect the adult from being offended -- is likewise anathema in Aboriginal teaching.

If Euro-American culture has successfully alienated an unconscious from its natural connection with the earth an experience once of all Indigenous people, everywhere (including 'European') -- this connection is still of absolute necessity for Humanity to tap into the reservoir of creativity play, the basis for all invention. Play for the unconscious is like sleep for the body: it provides a mechanisms for the mind to physiologically recharge its psychological components while releasing tensions thoroughly stimulating the psychic energies leading to inspiration, resourcefulness, whimsy, the essence of imagination.

These three qualities of invention -- motivation (perceiving the dream or need), perseverance and humor -- give creation its human face, allowing fantasy to meet reality in that realm of comfort, safety and achievement. This is crucial to the genesis of new ideas.

Play allows the body to sanction both physical and mental exercise for its own sake, a healing process. It is through the therapeutic modality that the unconscious is given both the space and time to break into sentient awareness, an experience of discovery. Such revelations are prerequisite to initiatory practice, the habit of ingenuity.

Discovery -- the existential moment when the subconscious and cognition meet -- is thus celebrated in all its varied wonderment and awe. Here is where the perception of language, already frozen by virtue of its implausibility to convey the precise experience both felt and understood by the player, is first recognized. However inventive one may become in attempts to translate this simultaneous merging of the interior spiritual and physical worlds, s/he is condemned by simple corporality to providing insight into this mystery less than the sum of the whole. Since Word alone is a very clumsy device, and has little relevant power without being heard, seen or experienced in context with its surrounding field, archaeology of meaning cannot exist in a vacuum.

Let the reader compare for example, three English versions of the Bible, the King James, the Revised Standard, and Catholic: chose any chapter where there is textural concurrence among the three and then remove all references to either "God," the "Father," the "Holy Spirit," etc., or if the New Testament, "Jesus" or Christ Jesus," and their derivatives. Then read the selected passage. Do not be concerned with particulars of sentence structure, grammar or syntax, the lesson here is not the exactness of the Word but its propriety. Likewise do not allow the biases of judgment (e.g., a previous belief asto its verity at overstatement) to cloud an otherwise dispassionate assessment. When there is no testimonial whatsoever to the hierarchy of the teaching, does not the intrinsic nature of the manuscript (and the teaching) yet resonate in the conscious ?

In her remarkable work How to Write (1931), Gertrude Stein devised an elaborate language to reflect on the external page this capacity for the reader to actually be in the presence of the interior resonance of the writer in the course of reading itself. A practitioner at least in theory of the oral tradition, Stein understood the importance of the unconscious in dominance over the elocution of speech. Through an astute juxtaposition of sentence structure and repetitive sound she was able to provide the student with a totality of experiential language, a dialect of translation from the unknown to the seen, premised on the actuality of experience of both the writer (speaker) and the reader (receiver), in real time. 

How to Write is many things -- a musical score, a dramatic epic, a literary painting, a dance with words -- but its power is as a textbook on the physics of language. Stein's homily, original in its presentation but common in its decree, allows one to be able to decipher both spoken and written language for what they truly are, mediums for exploration of the interior dimensions of temporality, an examination of the infinite.

Stein's essential maxims were reiterated a generation later by the poet Charles Olson in his Maximus essay Projective Verse (1950), when he wrote:

The source of this energy, Olson projected, was in the breath, which for Olson allowed the basic particle of sound (the syllable) to be shaped by the mind (the unconscious), predicated on the heart (rhythm), which allowed the line (language) to be written. While Olson in Projective Verse did not address "the mind" as the unconscious, there appears, frankly, to be no other way of interpreting the phrase, if one were to "project" the context of Olson's Word(s) in the "HELD COMPOSITION" of the poem.

When applied to other texts, the principles espoused by these two disparate theorists seem to take on new emphasis. Any number of presumably "classic" or "great" (Euro-American) exponents of the English language -- Joyce, Melville, Shakespeare, Yeats -- were, like Stein and Olson, tenacious enough to construct their own dialects, providing the student a ready source with which to experiment and test the interior realities of unconscious idioms.

Yet curiously, the obvious lesson of this exercise remains elusive to many, and to all at one time or another, namely, that each individual formulates their own language whenever they speak or write, because they are tapping into that source of their own creation, the unconscious, as they conceptualize their thoughts in the moment before they are crystallized in conscious speech. It is this enunciation of transference (if one as an individual is open to it) that allows anyone to experience the moment as it really is.

Taking this concept one step further, if one applies the premise of kinetics to language, then the:

dynamics that deals with the 
effects of forces upon the motion of material bodies.⁶ 

becomes

dynamics that deals with the 
transference of the rhythm of breath upon the heart of language.

To illustrate the point further, let one now apply the axiom used immediately above to the following definition of kinetic theory:

thus becomes:

the minute syllables of unconscious language are in vigorous motion on the assumptions that (1) the syllables, or sound of conscious speech move with consistency in rhythm that continually encounter one another and thus transfers their individual rhythms and meanings and cause dual tension by their impact on the mind, or unconscious language and conscious speech simultaneously, a spiritual dimension, and that (2) the rhythm of unconscious language increases with an increase in either the heart of the syllables or the breath in separation (as in fusion) of the syllables or in both when emotion is added.

This is no idle analysis. A similar view is related in English translations of essentially non-English precepts throughout the Indigenous world. Two examples from the Americas include:

And:
 

And:

These texts, and the Native reference given earlier cannot possible have originated out of transmutations of Western influence. They show unequivocally a keen understanding of both science and social organization as it relates to the Natural Order of Things. For Aboriginal Peoples of the Americas, this disengagement from Nature is the bane of the present life, because it is through the forces of nature that Humanity comes to understand its place in the universe through the unconscious, the cradle of life.

Indeed, disrobing the English lexicon in the manner that has been suggested here bares its unconscious death-wish through a conscious use of naked brutality-in-language; careful study of the derivatives of various English words will reveal appalling shortcomings in the amount of nurturing speech, but seemingly endless references to unfavorable jargon, countless words that disrupt, malign, persecute, and destroy everything in its path. The incessant cruelty of English as a speech can only be the result of its evolution as predominately a language of violent conquest and domination.

This can be seen through the looking-glass of Indigenous peoples: considered a "Father culture," the Umoⁿhoⁿ have survived intact through migration, natural adversity, tribal raids, alien disease, cultural and religious oppression, and economic exploitation. They are one of the very few Native peoples to have never been at war with the United States. This is significant, because Umoⁿhoⁿ sacred teachings hold an acceptance of one an-other in relation to the Hu'thuga, or tribal circle. For the Umoⁿhoⁿ, whose only anthropological comparison with respect to the complexity of kinship relations are the Chinese, the Hu'thuga continues to guide a distinctly Umoⁿhoⁿ, and thereby universal perception of our current time, as among all peoples, with the wisdom of the ages.

To be sure, this is a continual reconstruction, but as with all cultures, the Umoⁿhoⁿ likewise evolved over many generations, and what was "traditional" prior to 1790, when European records normally acknowledge the Umoⁿhoⁿ for the first time belie the oral tradition's suggestion of as early as 1630 of first European contact had, to some degree, probably changes (perhaps dramatically) from what must have been common social practice during the many, many winters of pre-European contact.

Even so, today less than 100 speakers of fluent Umoⁿhoⁿ remain, and there are only handful of professional scholars and linguists who have any expertise in being able to work with the language at all. Even more disabling for the people -- 80% of who are a quarter-century old or less -- there is as yet no real substantial language or culture program modality by which to emulate their natural interest about their language. We know that such interest and curiosity is there because (even among families who have not spoken their language at all on a daily basis for three decades or more) their children are still thinking Umoⁿhoⁿ conceptually, in school.

Since language by definition is an evolving, living presence, the Umoⁿhoⁿ may still find it possible to reconnect with substantial portions of their Native tongue by tapping into both the known and forgotten archival materials available in various repositories and private hands. Through careful rendering of both audio and videotapes and research into written documentation, adaptations of the transcriptions derived from what had been spoken to the standards of the International Phonetic Alphabet, for instance, could be assembled. The process could take up to a generation and more, and is costly to be sure, but not insurmountable.

The plight of the Umoⁿhoⁿ and other sovereign Nations toward sustaining their culture in the face of an invasive, malignant English speech raises profound questions about that language (and its antecedents) that Indo-Europeans cannot possibly face. If, as Jared Diamond says, the loss of minority speech closes down the available options of dominant languages, then the implication remains (for the unconscious) asto what those variables might have been.

Returning to the origins of English, we find that as the layers of subjugated, conquered peoples grew, so did the vernacular of aggression and terror. This is not to say that the conscious manifestation of English doesn't hold some of the most wonderful possibilities for constructing architecture for the Word that is truly a living, eternal presence. But if through an archaeology of meaning we come to find that the unconscious the burial mound of English -- IS the Achilles Heel (as it were) of the culture of which the language purports to represent, then the values upon which that society is based, and upon which the architecture of the language expresses a certainty of truth, is spiritually bankrupt, and a fraud.

As we look to the unconscious in our use of language, then for whom is the technological miracle of the 21st Century truly for? What is the true basis of becoming computer literate if the delicate equilibrium among the world's varied environments, even now, continues to falter from the sheer weight of its physical inability to sustain several billion in human population? If society's entire life since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution has been predicated on the consumption of what we now know definitively as limited natural resources, what good are economic theories of market growth potential when those same forces are so pervasive in defining which technologies (such as computers) are embraced, and which are shunned.

In entering the new century, so much of the absurdity of our present trouble is unnecessary suffering. The future of our planet is much more dependent on the survival of the languages of the Indigenous Peoples of the World than of our modern English monoculture. If Native People continue to assimilate, if their values become one with those of the prevailing and future generations, if their languages are consumed into English, then we as a human species are lost. But if Aboriginal peoples somehow are able to sustain their fundamental spirituality, retaining their connection with the earth and the interior rhythms felt by the soul through revitalization and integration of their speech, then both we, and the earth, may just have a chance.

References

¹Diamond, Jared, Speaking With A Single Tongue, Discover Magazine, February 1993, Pg. 78-85

²Bopp, Judie, Michael Bopp, Lee Brown, Phil Lane, Producers, The Sacred Tree, Four Winds Development Press, Alberta, Canada, 1985, Page 30.

³Mander, Jerry, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indigenous Nations (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1991, Page 31-2 

⁴Miller, Alice, Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberation Experience of Facing Painful Truth , Meridan, New York, New York, 1993, Page 163

⁵Olson, Charles, Projective Verse, American Poetry: 1950-1960. Donald Allen, Editor Grove Press, New York, New York, 1960, pg. 387

⁶Gove, Philip Babcock, Editor in Chief, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, G. & C., Merriam Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1971, Pg. 1124

⁷lbid, Page 1124

⁸Hau de nio sau nee , the, A Basic Call to Consciousness, Akwasasnee Notes, Roosevelt town, New York, 1977, Page 9

⁹Robinson, Victor R., The Hu'thuga, privately published by Victor R. Robinson, 1982, Page 12, cited in Ridington, Robin, and Hastings, Dennis, Blessing for A Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1997), Page 6

¹⁰Wayne, Tyndall, Traditional Parenting, unpublished manuscript, 1993