gathering conversations
communication and society

Life was born when an environment was interpreted as a pattern of signs. In the beginning was the word, just not one we'd recognise. Life itself is a sign for interpretation, communication and society intrinsic to it, not merely a consequence of individual awareness.

I grow attached to everyone I talk with, framed in place and time, the briefest conversation lingers. We talk. We want to be heard. When we are not, speaking and listening too become hard.

As natural as air we breathe words in. Minds fumble codes, sense answers questions: strong or weak, opportunity or threat?

Communication quickly turned our primate tribes into the world for us; their rise and fall coextensive with our own. Two billion years before, or thereabouts, the very cells from which we came themselves emerged from a social act. Like sperm and egg, different understandings had come together and fused.

Life painted its world with information; conversations began. Strategies grew. Whatever chemistry life first stepped through viruses were there, if not first on the stage; and all were social by nature.

Societies provide the context that frames the lives of individuals, but sociality is fundamental. It is the builder of complex organisms, and it's the mechanism for their survival. Even our bodies are social alliances rather than the dictatorships we commonly imagine them to be.

Through everyday germs and social memes inside and out inundated, we became. Soon after the sociophiles sociophage came, yet social we all still remain.

Being heard, except by our mothers, summons diners not dinner, yet we speak out, despite our awareness, despite the self-interest needed for survival. Life is not about code but about connecting; communicating isn't merely in our genes it is their function.

Searching for what we need we find we need be found by those who find they need us; just as we need them.

Having sympathy is easy, but to feel empathy for others and their groups is challenging; and taboo to feel for other species. The young of our families like other animals, reflect their adults' behaviours, joining their societies in competing as well as co-operating.

Children find a special language binds their gangs together, framing outsiders. So too Finnish bound a new born Finland.

What I say is not the point; it's why I say it that counts. We express ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, to show others how we want them to see. They can only perceive us through their interests; and our interest is our engagement.

In solitude losing what made us, us lost in imagining, rudderless; free of society we are disempowered.

Trapping us in interpretation, it is images and words that seduce us; only numbers are clear. Ambiguity is intrinsic to natural language. If it were otherwise, over the millions of years it would have vanished along with our tails. Queries, doubts, and debate all shepherd us together.

A lock of hair is art when framed, in a locket on display, its culture clear the frame ends, and art begins.

Conversations gathered and glued societies together, and built the places in which we have developed both physically and spiritually, safely, and at home. We have grown, securing our everyday needs and well-being, relying upon the sense we make with others through our gathering conversations.  ►