I refuse to accept that a clear thought can ever be inexpressible. Appearances, however, are against me. For just as there is a level of pain at which the body ceases to feel because, should it become involved in its pain, should it groan but once, it would seemingly crumble and return to dust; and just as there is a peak at which pain takes the air on its own wings-so there is a level of thought where words have no part to play. Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable. And yet things merely appear so. If human discourse is capable of expressing perfectly no more than a mean level of thought, it is because the mean of humankind thinks with this level of intensity; it is to this level that it assents, it is to this measure of exactness that it agrees. If we fail to make ourselves understood clearly, we should not blame the tool we use.
Clear discourse presupposes three conditions: a speaker who knows what he wishes to say, a listener in a state of wakefulness, and a language common to both. But it is not enough for a language to be clear in the way an algebraic proposition is clear. It must also have a real, not simply a possible, content. Before this happens, the participants must have, as a fourth element, a common experience of the thing which is spoken of. This common experience is the gold reserve that confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are checks drawn on insufficient funds; algebra, in fact, is no more than a vast intellectual credit exercise, a counterfeiting operation which is legitimate because it is acknowledged; each individual knows that it has its object and meaning in something other than itself, namely arithmetic. But it is still not enough for a language to have clarity and content, as when I say, "that day, it was raining" or "three plus two makes five"; it must also have a goal and an imperative.
Otherwise, from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion. In this confused state of languages, men, even though they have a common experience, have no language with which to exchange its fruits. Then, when this confusion grows intolerable, universal languages are invented, clear and hollow, where words are but counterfeit coins no longer backed by the gold of authentic experience, languages which allow us from childhood to swell our heads with false knowledge. Between the confusion of Babel and these sterile esperantos, no choice is possible. It is these two forms of non-understanding, but more particularly the second, which I shall attempt to describe.
From "A Night of Serious Drinking" by René Daumal, as translated by David Coward & E. A. Lovatt from the original in French "La Grande Beuverie" and published by Shambala.
This foreword appears to be a theoretical statement. However, it applys to our daily life.Applying it would make our lives much easier.
A friend of yours comes back from a vacation to a place you have not visited. He tells you all about it. The experience he relates, to you, are just words. These words have little meaning until you visit that place yourself.
The Information Superhighway. It seems to me this Information Superhighway looks more like a very large data dump. You can find almost anything in it. Most of it is unchecked, unverified, often wrong data. It is data, not information. Anything you receive is just data. Only after you have sorted it can it become information. What is information to one becomes data to another upon receiving it. Information becomes knowledge only after it is worked with. It becomes understanding only after you made it yours through experience. And here comes R. Daumal again.... without a comon experience .......