As a young child I used to annoy both adults and children around me by asking questions like "What colour is the grass?" naturally the answer would be "green" to which I would reply "How do you know that the grass is green?". People would humour and reply along the lines of "because that's the colour" or "because it is" and I would respond with "but do you only think the grass is green because somebody told you it is?". Some people would just ignore me at this point whilst the more patient amongst my victims would look confused and suggest "well, the grass looks like a particular colour and that particular colour is known as green!". I can't remember anyone lasting beyond my last comment which would be "but you only know that colour as green because somebody told you that was what green looked like! Maybe they were mistaken and actually that colour is actualy called gureen".
To everbody my questions seemed odd, strange, childish, irrational and many other things but at the time they were of real significance to me and really my problem was that my communication skills hadn't developed enough that I could get other people to understand what I meant. Perhaps if I had used the example of the half full/half empty glass then I might have had more success (read more about Half Filled Glass )?
Language is wonderfully powerful, can be very inspirational and helps us in so many ways but I wonder if as we get older our relience on language actually in some way hinders our openness and begins to limit the different ways that we see things. Things expressed in words can seem like the truth but in fact there are many different ways of seeing things. For example a car crash is witnessed by 5 different people from a number of different angles and when the police attempt to take witness statements they are confused to find that none of the statements totally agree with each other and that 3 of the statements actually are very different. Does this mean that a number of the witnesses are lying? No, not necessarily it could be that the people saw the same thing but from different perspectives.
One might argue that a glass is half full or half empty depending on whether the liquid was being poured out and poured in but that makes an awful lot of assumptions. A child with no understanding of language probably couldn't care less whether the glass was half empty. If it was of interest to the child they might explore it, perhaps knocking over the glass and watching the liquid spill and maybe even tasting the spilt liquid but at no point would the child consider the amount of liquid in the glass to be of real consequence. We as adults might discuss the contents of the glass at considerable length (perhaps even blog about it!), possibly getting upset and offended at the suggestions of others, perhaps using the discussion as an opportunity to make ourselves seem better than others but the child will investigate the glass and contents for exactly what it is and perhaps even ignore it.
So, if someone ever asks you what colour the grass is or whether the glass is half full or half empty. Perhaps you might choose a different answer?
As a young child I used to annoy both adults and children around me by asking questions like "What colour is the grass?" naturally the answer would be "green" to which I would reply "How do you know that the grass is green?". People would humour and reply along the lines of "because that's the colour" or "because it is" and I would respond with "but do you only think the grass is green because somebody told you it is?". Some people would just ignore me at this point whilst the more patient amongst my victims would look confused and suggest "well, the grass looks like a particular colour and that particular colour is known as green!". I can't remember anyone lasting beyond my last comment which would be "but you only know that colour as green because somebody told you that was what green looked like! Maybe they were mistaken and actually that colour is actualy called gureen".
To everbody my questions seemed odd, strange, childish, irrational and many other things but at the time they were of real significance to me and really my problem was that my communication skills hadn't developed enough that I could get other people to understand what I meant. Perhaps if I had used the example of the half full/half empty glass then I might have had more success (read more about Half Filled Glass )?
Language is wonderfully powerful, can be very inspirational and helps us in so many ways but I wonder if as we get older our relience on language actually in some way hinders our openness and begins to limit the different ways that we see things. Things expressed in words can seem like the truth but in fact there are many different ways of seeing things. For example a car crash is witnessed by 5 different people from a number of different angles and when the police attempt to take witness statements they are confused to find that none of the statements totally agree with each other and that 3 of the statements actually are very different. Does this mean that a number of the witnesses are lying? No, not necessarily it could be that the people saw the same thing but from different perspectives.
One might argue that a glass is half full or half empty depending on whether the liquid was being poured out and poured in but that makes an awful lot of assumptions. A child with no understanding of language probably couldn't care less whether the glass was half empty. If it was of interest to the child they might explore it, perhaps knocking over the glass and watching the liquid spill and maybe even tasting the spilt liquid but at no point would the child consider the amount of liquid in the glass to be of real consequence. We as adults might discuss the contents of the glass at considerable length (perhaps even blog about it!), possibly getting upset and offended at the suggestions of others, perhaps using the discussion as an opportunity to make ourselves seem better than others but the child will investigate the glass and contents for exactly what it is and perhaps even ignore it.
So, if someone ever asks you what colour the grass is or whether the glass is half full or half empty. Perhaps you might choose a different answer?