Learning to live inside of language, to take up residence within words, does not necessarily imply that one will have to make do with a studio apartment or open floor plan. Neither does it imply that a word is flattened into a single layer. When speaking for the word-ark of Noach/Noah (the floating vessel that represents a word or language container), all of its shipping contents do not get stowed together. God instructs Noach/Noah to: “…make a lower deck [bottom], a second and a third deck” (Genesis 6:16). Why tri-tiered? Many commentators have sought to assign various meanings to this configuration of levels and all of these opinions may be revisited within the context of the language question. If our word-ark is primarily a word of Torah, then our discussion can produce a broad spectrum of hermeneutical insights into the latent possibilities inherent in the Torah text.

While by no means exhaustive, let us entertain a number of key interpretations of these three decks of the word-ark and try to model them in terms of a broader theory of language beginning with the Talmudic reading which relates to us that: “the bottom deck is trash, waste–the middle deck is for animals and the upper deck is for humans” (Sanhedrin 108b). Besides the practicalities of separating between the humans and the animals on the ark (when one considers it merely an ark in the simple reading of the Noach/Noah story), there is also good reason for assigning three gradations to  linguistic meaning on the figurative level of viewing the ark as a word (teivah once again signifying both ‘ark’ and ‘word’).

In kabbalistic thought, the juxtaposition of the human over and against the animal has a nuanced understanding woven into it. Essentially, the ‘animal’ conforms to its nature. It does not question it. We don’t encounter cows who want to be horses or chickens that are indignant that they were not endowed with the characteristics and abilities of a cat. Animals are what they are. No existential crisis involved. Animals embody the principle of self-similarity. They run on instinct. They function habitually.

The human, while having an animal operating system as a functional base, is not limited to animality. We are unique in our ability to challenge ourselves, to change or at least try to change our nature, to question who and what we are, to grow, to endeavor to become more than what we already are. With the ability to abstract and climb out from  ourselves and appreciate alternatives to the status quo, we find ourselves in a state of continual becoming. Rather than sticking with the program, we seek to reprogram everything including our inner and outer worlds. Instead of self-sameness we are self-altering.

These qualities reinsert themselves at ever opportunity within the fabric of creation and within the inner recesses of the soul. If we were to diagnose the animalistic within the human psyche we would have to look first and foremost at the behavioral traits–the gut grinding machinery that spins the wheels and gears and routinizes our functionality. However, this does not preclude animal qualities of the heart and mind. When we are feeling the same things again and again (especially in response to the same stimuli) we may be channeling our inner animal. Powerful uncontrolled feelings triggered in an automatic response brings to mind the nature of a wild animal, while tamed emotion, that can be pent up or caged, would relate to the domestic variety. And, were we to be talking about thought, then the animalistic would be the predicable patterns of thought. The animality of thought is algorithmic. Its pathways are already rehearsed. The mind chooses the path of least resistance which is well-trampled with pre-thought thoughts.

‘Human’ emotion, by contrast, desires an exploration and inquiry after that which it feels. Simultaneously, these feelings can be put aside or even feel differently. Unlike the animal, we can play to the cameras of self-reflection and attempt to get a feeling for our feelings (leading to curious statements such as ‘I don’t like how I feel’ or the blind wonder at why ‘I’ve never felt this way before’). Likewise, with pure thought which is baked fresh each day (ideally from scratch), I don’t merely pull a bag of expectations down off the shelf that is packed with preservatives having been prepared long ago. Reflexively we hold up a polished mirror to our minds to think about thinking and critically strive to think harder, longer, better.

Given this, we can now revisit the architecture of our word-ark. The upper level is for humans. This may be identified with the generative capacity of language. Words evolve. They can even be revolutionized. We continuously infuse them with new meanings, with new mind and spirit. To recognize the room for the creator of the word within the word is to catch sight of the built-in creative character of language which is its highest plane of signification.

Noach/Noah and his family were not only on the upper deck, they also were responsible for feeding all of the animals within the word-ark. In our analogy with a word, this is like saying that pure creativity (even within one’s linguistic creation) is always nourishing habit. No sooner does someone invent new meaning that someone else is there copying it. The language animal mimics his or her human counterpart. Then there are those in the herd who copy the copies. And so we have few humans and many animals. The monkey (a copier if there ever was one) really is in the middle–the middle level of the word-ark. Once definitions form and become cataloged in the dictionary, then it is only a matter of the repetition of their use to conform to a precedent. Words inspired from the upper deck reach transcendence via the human dimension that understands and employs metaphor. What animal could possibly comprehend that which rises above the simple meanings that play by the book that designates the animality of language?

But what of the lowest level? At the bottom of the word-ark are the waste products of the two upper levels. No container of meaning entirely escapes information entropy. Both the poiesis of the human and mimesis of the animal have an excess or remainder, a fuzziness that generates a non-signifying by-product–linguistic ‘waste.’ An creative process, especially those that go into reproduction, produce scraps of meaning that didn’t make the cut or fit the mold. These sink to the bottom of our word-ark. Yet, they are carried along with us. We don’t get to jettison them. Otherwise, why would the Torah leave this detail out? With ample water in the world to dilute and purify the toxicity of any waste, surely they could have tossed it overboard? There wasn’t even an external environment to fret over.

The lesson for us on a deeper level is that linguistic meaning, whether informal or formal, avant-garde or clichéd, must carry non-signifying verbal decay along with it. At times, we might be tempted to idolize a crystalline incarnation of language shorn from all indeterminacy and uncertainty–words without waste. Perhaps then all misunderstandings could be vanquished? But this would also freeze the development of meaning, for words like these would already mean all that they could ever mean. They would be given in their totality. Considered in this way, words would quickly turn totality into tyranny and all openness and novelty of expression would be suffocated. Could it be that the stockpiling for all of this waste was a forethought that intended it to become fertilizer for the new world? From all that we cannot immediately integrate into the human and animal planes of language–the ambiguity as waste which is ultimately never wasted–springs the much needed resource from which we will cultivate the growth of hitherto unexperienced linguistic significations. Thus, all three triers  for our word-ark represent the future when they are addressed together.

For Part Six our reflection upon the these three levels with the design of a word continues.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-age-of-information-and-hyperconnectivity-part-4/

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