Friends gathered around a dinner table

SPLectrum is born, the seed is there. So what, you may ask. Should I be impressed? Are those six lines really so special? I happen to think so. So much is hidden in their apparent simplicity. I am not talking about subjects for discussion at high table, but about what is happening in everyone’s daily life. Let’s unpack a little.

What if we thought of language differently, as something you live rather than something you speak? Let’s try it out on something that is great at bringing people together — a dinner party.

Before we can sit down and eat there is some cooking to be done. It’s all in its own language, the ingredients we need, how they have to be prepared, how they are joined together. All relational, a relational language that you live, experience as you are doing it.

Now we can sit down at the table and eat. The food I take, the way I eat it, the taste, the texture, the appearance. The experience is very personal, different for each one of us. It may be very similar, but not the same. The experience remains private.

We sit together at the table. Yes, the food experience may be strictly personal, but we do love to talk about it. We share experiences and opinions, and get more knowledgeable in the process. Food is part of our culture, it is a reality that we share and makes us feel we belong together.

Cooking the food, or eating it at the dinner table does not stand on its own. We share it with each other using the same natural language. We hear, we see, we taste and feel. These all produce experiences that compose a ‘higher level’ activity, while each speaks its own living language in the process. All are interconnected. And we don’t blink an eye, we just take it for granted.

Everyone has their own unique way they experience the world, how they relate to what is around them. Here it was just a dinner party. Think about everything else we do — working, playing, raising children, making music, arguing, falling in love.

The simplicity of six lines — the seed — versus the complexity of what follows from it. Does that hold? Isn’t there a way around it? All well and good me saying this, but is there actually support for this way of thinking? Let’s find out — that is what unpacking is about. What do these six lines allow me to say? And is it supported by what other people think? And yes, this will involve philosophers with their special vocabulary and ways of thinking, but also biologists, physicists, people in the arts, religion, all walks of life. Let’s go on that journey!

This post is part of the seed series. More on the seed in the seed area of the reference library.

Photo: Kelsey Chance / Unsplash