The drivers of talk

It is clear that somewhere there is an infinite energy source that powers talking and variations of talking like writing, arguing, tweeting, facebooking, emailing, mxiting, politics and love.

But looking at talk more closely, we are often baffled and even infuriated by it. People can talk such crap, much of it is boring, a lot is totally illogical, some is repetitive, contradicting, inflammatory.

How does this hang together?

Borrowing from what we vaguely remember from Freud: at the base of us is the basic, id, animal. It has no words, so it is not restricted by words. We don't have to be able to say "water" to want a drink.

But it is useful to be able to express stuff, so along comes human language and the ability to talk. So now we can express what we want, or put more elegantly, whatever the animal is stimulated by. But because the animal has no language, and is not confined by it, language cannot ever accurately express what its about.

Still, talk, or language, is somehow recognized by the animal in us and we experience something at a basic level when talk happens. It can therefore happen that at the animal level we just dig talking about some stuff. It is like stroking a cat, it cant stroke itself but it likes being stroked. The animal in us does not so much care what is said as long as the hot topics are being addressed, as long as the conversation scratches where it itches. So it is unimportant whether we say water is bad or water is good, the animal likes hearing about water. Ditto sex.

This explains why people say the same or similar things over and over again.

It explains why people talk rubbish and listen to rubbish. It explains why we believe lies and tell them. Lies told well beats silence. And lies about the hotspots beats the truth about the cold spots.

Talking about sin is the next best thing to committing it. Pontificating about monogamy, polygamy, cheating, fornication is the poor mans next best to the real thing.

Talk is inflamed not so much by whether we agree but what we agree / disagree about.

Talk does not convince others, and we are not convinced by talk, nor should we be. However, talk does expose what we already know and believe.

Talk functions to confirm to us what we already believe, or what we would like to believe, because behind all this talk is knowing and behind all the knowing is what is, the root, the id, the animal.