Raiding the Articulate
Thoughts on NeuraLink, language, and T.S Eliot
Sometimes it’s hard to find the right words to say what we mean. One of the 20th century’s greatest poets, T.S Eliot, felt the same way–despite his Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote in “East Coker”
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say,
or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
As the first human receives a NeuraLink implant, I was reminded of something Elon Musk said on Joe Rogan’s podcast a few years ago when describing his new technology. Elon Musk believes that human speech will become obsolete. Instead of articulating our thoughts and emotions into words and speaking or writing them to others, humans will be able to telepathically send emotions, concepts, ideas, and images with each other.
Talking, he believes, is an inefficient form of communication. The speaker compresses a complex topic into words, speaks them, and the recipient decompresses the words and assimilates them into his or her own mind. Information loss occurs and miscommunication happens.
This is intriguing. As T.S Eliot wrote in “East Coker”, words are often “shabby equipment always deteriorating / In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, / Undisciplined squads of emotion.”
After all, a large portion of communication is already nonverbal and verbal communication is often fraught with misunderstandings as we struggle to find the words to convey what’s inside our heads.
What would it mean to just communicate the essence of our emotion or memory? How would it affect our empathy? Our connection with others? Our intuition? One of the best, most intimate moments you can share with someone is to merely sit together, not say anything, but still know what the other is thinking or feeling. It’s a moment of silence that needs no words, because the communication feels like it’s beyond words. Like a married couple who’ve spent so much time together that they no longer need to say much.
But, that kind of communication (beyond just reading body language and facial expressions–really knowing the other’s thought patterns and what makes them tick) takes work–often the work of prior verbal communication. The work of speaking is to communicate the truth–to articulate what’s inside our heads using the right words. As Eliot said, we need “The common word exact without vulgarity / The formal precise but not pedantic.”
Maybe NeuraLink would help us feel more known. I’ve always been struck by a comment from the narrator in Heart of Darkness– “it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence–that which makes its truth, its meaning–its subtle and penetrating essence . . . we live, as we dream–alone.”
But, maybe we are meant to have hidden spaces in our minds and hearts–secret gardens that must be cultivated and opened with care. This process, of articulating what we feel and think and know, makes us more human and is how we live out the pattern set by the Incarnation, in which Spirit became Word became Flesh. To do away with speech–with words–would make us less human and less integrated as persons.
Behind this desire to overcome language’s inefficiency at saying what we mean is a reductionist idea of humanity. One podcaster quoted that “speech is just the shaping of breath as it exits our lungs.” This is like saying that the human body is just a lump of flesh to act as an outpost of the mind.
In fact, in his Joe Rogan episode, Elon Musk says that we are brains in vats, and the vat is the skull. No wonder he thinks that meaning is lost when it takes shape in words. In his perspective, the mind is the most important part of us and the physical world is a crutch made necessary by the current lack of technology. Even nonverbal communication expressed through body language, facial expressions, and intuitions about the other person’s physical presence, would be done away with.
Yes, the purpose of speech is to communicate meaning, but meaning is the union of spirit and matter–abstract and concrete. The physical fully expresses the nonphysical. When we speak (or write), we shape our thoughts as well as express them. The process of writing helps us discover what we think and the meaning unfolds as ideas are shaped into words.
Doing away with words wouldn’t be an advance in communication, but a devolution into a more primitive realm as our thoughts become murkier and more jumbled in a vague ether of abstractions and images and emotions inside our minds. The abstract is more fully revealed in the concrete. The person more fully known in both soul and body. Speech is one of the ways in which we actualize meaning into the world.
The language we choose, and the medium we use to express our meaning, also matters. If someone decides to express an idea in words, whether they choose to use the form of essay, poem, rap, ballad, or blog post matters for the overall message. The author might choose different syntax and words depending on whether it’s an academic or informal article. A songwriter could use the same set of lyrics to set to classical music or a rap and the medium would affect what the overall piece communicates.
Yes, there’s a difference between speech and communication. But in a healthy and integrated person, there is harmony between verbal and nonverbal communication. It may take work to integrate speech, presence, and action so that they don’t contradict each other, but it’s good work. Like gardening, cooking, or sculpting, it creates order and form out of chaos and void. To do away with words would leave us a greater “mess of imprecision of feeling, / Undisciplined squads of emotion.” Words are the structure by which we mold the internal into the external. It’s how we embody our thoughts.
God spoke creation into being. His word transformed the chaos that “was without form” into the Garden of Eden. Later in history, His Word became incarnate in human flesh. When we speak, we shape the world–our own thoughts, our relationships, and culture. By speaking, we can take part in the creative act of building our worlds.
There are challenges, of course. Miscommunication abounds. Sometimes it feels incredibly difficult to express what we care most about. Eliot wrote that “And so each venture / Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate.” Part of our calling as humans is to face the inarticulate and articulate it — using our words to bring order to the raw material of thought and emotion.
Animals can’t do this. Michelangelo raided the inarticulate when he stood before a hunk of rock and began chiseling the Pieta. The early settlers did the same when they stood before the wilderness and carved out homesteads and planted gardens. When we speak, we engage in an adventure with that same creative potential.
NeuraLink’s telepathic potential may seem like the easy way out for communication, but it will destroy the arts of literature and poetry, which rely on the boundaries of structured language. It will ultimately reduce, not build, human connection. Because things are known by their boundaries, shapes, and forms.
Elon Musk’s vision may be a farflung utopia (or dystopia) that will never happen. But it’s worth considering what’s at stake. It’s not just our language–it’s our humanity. To express ourselves honestly and accurately through our language is often difficult–especially if our thoughts run deep and our emotions haven’t been properly nurtured–but engaging that struggle is one of the adventures of being human. As Eliot says,
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.
But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
