Aunt Pat Responds to Chomsky

Well, Aunt Pat read the post on Chomsky, and asked me a good question.

Let me back up for a moment. Aunt Pat is a Peter Gabriel FANATIC. She follows him around the country when he's on tour, she flies to England to see him record, she undoubtedly dreams about him most nights.

So when she saw that I wrote about Chomsky, she asked about the Peter Gabriel line in "Animal Nation" that goes “Chomsky and Skinner, how could they be so blind?" Well, I'm going to try to make Aunt Pat's day.

I THINK PETER GABRIEL IS RIGHT AND HE IS SMARTER, WISER, AND MORE ENLIGHTENED THAN CHOMSKY AND SKINNER. (And of course, by association, I am saying [in this case] that I am smarter and more enlightened than Chomsky and Skinner too . . . Harvard trains you in this kind of intellectual arrogance). So here's the quick explanation of what I think Sir Gabriel is saying:

Chomsky's linguistic analysis says that language is a specific feature of human beings . . . it distinguishes us from other animals, even more dramatically than opposable thumbs do. This also implies that animals don't have a rich language amongst themselves, either inter and intra species.

But if you're Peter Gabriel, or an American Indian, or a hunter gatherer, or a dweller of the rainforest, (or a white suburban man from the suburbs of Chicago who wishes he was in touch with nature) you would say that not only do animals have rich and ongoing languages, but that the natural world speaks amongst itself all the time. Rivers talk to fish who talk to the wind who talks to the worms who talk to the sunset who talks to the mountain range who talks to the coyotes. And those nature-based people can hear and speak the language too--and NOT as a metaphor. Us "civilized" folks in modern times might say that it's a nice "metaphor" when they think they "talk" to nature. NO. The nature-based people would say they aren't talking to nature as a metaphor, they are ACTUALLY talking to nature. They know the language still, while we have forgotten it. Russian is unintelligible to me because I never grew up speaking it. The language of nature is unintelligible to me because, also, I didn't grow up speaking it.

I know, it sounds crazy . . . it sounds crazy to me too. But I always wonder, who is crazier? The culture that talks to nature, and treats it with respect as a friend and mother, or modern culture that doesn't talk to nature, and has cut down 75% of its trees (globally), and sends 100 species into extinction every single day?

Not bad Peter Gabriel, not bad.