Bring on the Raw, Unverbalized
(Blog Post)
You need raw unverbalized life if you want to comprehend reality. "Raw," . . .unfiltered. "Unverbalized" . . . not reduced to words. "Life" . . . not theory.
That observation comes from William James (a/k/a "The Philosophical Stud Horse"), juxtaposing the right hemispheric "take" on the world to the left hemispheric, all about a hundred years before St. Iain flushed out the hemispheric differences with neuroscience and cognitive studies.
The right hemisphere takes in the world's sensations. That's the entry gate . . . as St. Thomas Aquinas recognized and GKC entertainingly elaborated upon in The Dumb Ox. The "raw" part. It then feeds it to the left hemisphere, which then processes it and chops it up into usable parts, rendering it something "less than" raw reality. More usable, yes, which is all the left hemisphere really cares about, but less real. Not raw.
In its processing, the left hemisphere puts it into concepts, which are then articulated in words ("verbalizing"), rendering those initial raw sensations even more usable . . . but removing them another yard from reality.
Full reality is "unverbalized," The Philosophical Stud Horse said.
"Unverbalized" doesn't merely mean you don't talk out loud about your ideas. That's just the bare minimum. A decent person intuitively keeps his ideas as quiet as he keeps his privates covered. Sure, there are occasions to whip them out, but as a habit, a disposition, an approach to daily life: keep them to yourself.
"Unverbalized" means you don't reduce them to words at all, internally or externally. It's the Zen master's "just looking" disposition. And it's the path to the deepest reality.
All this stands athwart discursive reasoning, and discursive reasoning is both the touchstone and bugbear of modernity. It becomes the scourge of modernity when its results spew forth in opinions and public policy.