Journal Entry #5: Thoughts and Languages

Being someone who speaks multiple languages, I have grasped the true importance of communication. The processes of evolution and global developement were greatly intensified after the introduction of literature. However, with communication comes misinterpretation. Languages are a systematic means of communicating that need to be taught, and this is evidence that humans are limited in expressing themselves. Will someone ever interpret something that you say to them in exactly the way that you intend? Would that require the person to experience the exact same sensations towards a string of words as you do?

Languages are an integral part of our existence. Particularly in a world of telecommunications and technology. Our thought processes are directly linked to the words and symbols that we call a language, and it is almost inconceivable to imagine what our world would be like without languages. A renowned philosopher named Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that "if we spoke a different language, we would perceive a different world". This is a plausible argument. With different languages come different expressions, symbols, and ultimately a different way of thinking.

Languages can work both for and against us. Often they can group abstract concepts into words, symbols or expressions such that these concepts become comprehensible to the human mind. However, other times it can lead to misinterpretation or oversimplification and generalisation. Nevertheless, I will continue to try to learn new languages, and following Wittgenstein's philosophy, it will hopefully help me to perceive the world around me in different ways.

Journal Entry #4: Beauty

How can we define what is beautiful? What is beautiful to us is purely subjective, but beauty, universally, is a perceptual experience that instils a sense of pleasure, meaning, satisfaction and perhaps emotion in the subject. Beauty can have aesthetic properties, thus bringing us in harmony with our senses and with nature, or even conceptual properties. For example, the concept of a new innovative technology may be beautiful to a businessman, whilst the aesthetic, figurative/symbolic and religious implications in Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" may be beautiful to a painter.

However, human beauty encompasses a different facet of beauty, which is characterised by a person's personality, intelligence, grace, congeniality, charm, integrity, congruity and elegance. These include both the so called "outer beauty" and "inner beauty" (which is not physically observable). Unfortunately, as a cultural creation, beauty has been heavily commercialised. It has become a standard of comparison in society. People feel resentment, anger and dissatisfaction when they do not achieve "beauty". They do not contain the physical characteristics that categorise them as "beautiful". This has had a negative impact on us as it enhances materialism and superficiality in society.

People must embrace not what they are told is beautiful, but what their mind and senses tell them.